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Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

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Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#141

Post by niklasrde »

beagle3 wrote: post #115
b0tch7 wrote: post #86

I'm an Android lifer (all my smartphones) and now live in Australia. I use Whatsapp for 99% of my personal messaging and frankly, I love it. Same messaging experience for everyone (including emojis), great desktop app, easy backup & restore as you switch phones, was early on the reply-swipe functionality, easy forwarding, voice messages, . No, none of these are "killer" features, but it's honestly one of the purest e…

Backup works android->android and iOS->iOS but not if you want to cross the lines; guess you don’t care about that... but: If you use Google’s backup for WhatsApp, it is NOT encrypted. Your local backup IS encrypted. It’s not your data - you can’t have it except through the app. But google can (and does) have that data for likely 95% of android WhatsApp users; E2E with this state of affairs is not very useful. (I ass…

Whilst it does not work natively, there are working 3rd party products that let you backup on Android and restore on iPhone. Or at least there were 2.5 years ago.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#142

Post by tarsinge »

tasogare wrote: post #18
ThePhysicist wrote: post #9

From my experience a lot of people will not hesitate to contact you via WhatsApp even in a professional setting if they can get hold of your phone number. After this happened several times to me I made sure to have a separate phone for business where no messengers or any "social" apps are installed. The funny side of this behavior is your client messaging you via WhatsApp but forgetting their profile picture shows th…

I’ve never understood the appeal of WhatsApp: it requires a phone number (so it’s useless or hard to setup abroad, and it’s tied to a very personal data), handle very poorly wifi connection (somehow it seems to only update when connected over 4G) and force me to download pictures and videos to see them, trashing my photo folder in the process. It also has no killer features in comparison to any existing messaging app…

iPhones are in minority outside the US, WhatsApp is simply the Universal Apple Messages replacement, because it’s a lightweight app.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#143

Post by j7ake »

What are the chances that this could be solved by having the German government (or EU) overpay to poach a team of instant messaging engineers from around the globe (give them 2x their current salary, have milestones to unlock more money) to have them develop a Whatsapp alternative that can be used in EU?

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#144

Post by tehlike »

j7ake wrote: post #143

What are the chances that this could be solved by having the German government (or EU) overpay to poach a team of instant messaging engineers from around the globe (give them 2x their current salary, have milestones to unlock more money) to have them develop a Whatsapp alternative that can be used in EU?

Or use something that's already opensource

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#145

Post by gruturo »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #126
Hokusai wrote: post #58

This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…

>The USA is in a position to shutdown all the technological infrastructure of Europe (AWS, Google, Facebook, Azure, ...) and to openly spy its citizens OK, and what can we do about that? We build our own successful cars, we build our own successful planes but it seems like when it comes to building highly scalable world dominating software we are powerless even though our universities churn out tons of talented CS en…

We pay devs worse because software is a complete aftertought, and the guys who produce it therefore are not seen as adding much value, if any. Meanwhile, the "software is eating the world" memo is almost 10 years old yet nobody this side of the pond got it.

Fix this mindset (good luck!), which is the real issue, and dev wages will correct themselves too.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#146

Post by jeroenhd »

j7ake wrote: post #143

What are the chances that this could be solved by having the German government (or EU) overpay to poach a team of instant messaging engineers from around the globe (give them 2x their current salary, have milestones to unlock more money) to have them develop a Whatsapp alternative that can be used in EU?

Several European government bodies are looking into/starting to transition to self-hosted Matrix servers. Further development on the protocol with government funding could very well happen.

France already started developing their own alternative: https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed... The German government is trialing it already: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Open-Source-Bundeswe...

Advancements are definitely being made, though because of the way governments operate I doubt we'll see their contributions be open sourced very soon. It's nice to know there are developments in the right direction, though.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#147

Post by acqq »

dijit wrote: post #138
vinay427 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of European countries are complicit in similar acts of their own, and many more tacitly assist. I don't think many deserve being painted as a victim of this situation. There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. In any case, I think the hypocrisy makes sense if you consider that the people saying this are from places (the US + close allies) that proba…

> There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. EU EU cooperation is different though than US EU cooperation. I will very much agree though, that GCHQ has been in bed with NSA for far too long and it's disgusting. But I think there's a clear delineation between: "Our government does shady things" and "Another nations government does shady things, and incidenta…

> GCHQ has been in bed with NSA for far too long and it's disgusting

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

But also:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/nsa-scandal-reki...

"Germans, still outraged by NSA spying, learn their country may have helped (2015)"

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#148

Post by 2ion »

b0tch7 wrote: post #86

I'm an Android lifer (all my smartphones) and now live in Australia. I use Whatsapp for 99% of my personal messaging and frankly, I love it. Same messaging experience for everyone (including emojis), great desktop app, easy backup & restore as you switch phones, was early on the reply-swipe functionality, easy forwarding, voice messages, . No, none of these are "killer" features, but it's honestly one of the purest e…

Curious how your enthusiasm develops when they start injecting ads into their application chats. I haven't seen a single ad all year and will keep it that way.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#149

Post by vinay427 »

dijit wrote: post #138
vinay427 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of European countries are complicit in similar acts of their own, and many more tacitly assist. I don't think many deserve being painted as a victim of this situation. There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. In any case, I think the hypocrisy makes sense if you consider that the people saying this are from places (the US + close allies) that proba…

> There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. EU EU cooperation is different though than US EU cooperation. I will very much agree though, that GCHQ has been in bed with NSA for far too long and it's disgusting. But I think there's a clear delineation between: "Our government does shady things" and "Another nations government does shady things, and incidenta…

This actually preceded the EU as it was during the Falklands situation, and I don't think EUEU cooperation is inherently different if interests are misaligned (which has happened many times between EU members), or if a country (e.g. the UK) chooses to leave the EU.

I was hoping to at least illustrate that European countries (particularly EU countries) have for many years gone out of their way to invade the privacy of foreign citizens when it benefits them, just as the US feels free to do so today. I don't support this in either case, and rereading my initial comment I made a quick edit that I think makes this a bit more clear.

My point is more that if we're going to claim that certain countries are the victims of US surveillance, the countries that opt into cooperating and benefit more often than not really shouldn't be at the top of the list. The US and most western European countries (or certainly those which cooperate with the US) do not see each other as their foremost adversaries, which I suspect is why both seem to willingly sign up for this cooperation. I would instead suggest that the victims of this relationship are limited to third-parties that don't have anything to gain but are still vulnerable to these extrajudicial privacy invasions.

EDIT: > But I think there's a clear delineation between: "Our government does shady things" and "Another nations government does shady things, and incidentally we're entirely dependent on them not to do it to us".

Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but this sounds to me like it is an attempt to justify the hypocrisy you alluded to in the initial comment.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#150

Post by fennecfoxen »

vbezhenar wrote: post #140
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The USA is in a position to shutdown all the technological infrastructure of Europe (AWS, Google, Facebook, Azure, ...) and to openly spy its citizens OK, and what can we do about that? We build our own successful cars, we build our own successful planes but it seems like when it comes to building highly scalable world dominating software we are powerless even though our universities churn out tons of talented CS en…

I thought that in US salary is significantly higher than in EU. Probably that's the main differentiator.

Can confirm, moved from London (while it was still EU) to NYC and literally doubled my pay
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