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WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

theguardian.com

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Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#131

Post by variant »

jcarrano wrote: post #77

This could be very good for Meta, just get the government to never exercise the law on you and to do it instead on smaller competitors that may threaten you. Now everyone wanting to make a communications app (or anything implementing that functionality) is risking an expensive lawsuit on the UK. Meta too, but they have the bucks and influence to weather it.

This is why big companies love regulation, and why regulation - even when well-intentioned - can be such a disruptive force to market signals.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#132

Post by unxdfa »

tiernano wrote: post #125
ttt3ts wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just block the UK and make everyone use a VPN this is already the case with age verification for adult content.

VPN wouldn't work. Whatsapp is tied to a mobile number so they would just blacklist all +44 numbers. No matter where you are, even if your an expat, it won't work....

This instantly puts me off WhatsApp from a reliability perspective. Your identity needs to be decoupled from something someone else controls.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#133

Post by sangnoir »

fidgewidge wrote: post #119
TillE wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last bit is exactly right. The UK has proposed all sorts of plainly moronic online restrictions, which never actually get implemented. They simply don't have the clout to push around enormous American companies. It's a tiny country. If the EU or US were proposing such a law, you should take it seriously, but this is just a joke.

It's a country with 20% of the population of the USA. That's not exactly a tiny country. > If the EU or US were proposing such a law, you should take it seriously Judging from a few quick searches, there are more Facebook employees in the UK than in Ireland which is their main base of EU operations. They also have a presence in Switzerland (also not EU). FB apparently have some employees in Germany to comply with loc…

> Judging from a few quick searches, there are more Facebook employees in the UK than in Ireland which is their main base of EU operations.

Regardless of employee count in the UK office, it's only 2% of the market. I have no doubt about the choice I'd make if were faced with the same choice: especially since companies already have plans to decrease headcount.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#134

Post by sangnoir »

323 wrote: post #128
outside1234 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

97% of WhatsApp are outside the UK. They would drop the UK in a heartbeat. They also know this happening would topple the government in the UK. So it will never occur if they threaten it.

But a lot of people outside UK talk with people inside UK. A ban would touch a lot more people than 3%.

That's the same argument made in the article: they'd rather drop the UK and keep E2EE than weaken E2EE to keep the UK market.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#135

Post by m463 »

rany_ wrote: post #2

I can't believe Meta is fighting the good fight for once.

On the other hand, it's not really end to end encrypted. They've inserted a sort of man-in-the-end bit so they can check your content in the app and send out information about the content out-of-band. I don't know if they do this for advertising purposes, but I know they do image recognition to detect for example, specific types of pornography.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#136

Post by m463 »

yosser wrote: post #26

Isn't this a red herrring? I thought the law didn't require the removal of E2E encryption, but rather mandated the addition of a back door that submits some kind of meta data summary to a third party service?

whatsapp has that.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#137

Post by ttt3ts »

tiernano wrote: post #125
ttt3ts wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just block the UK and make everyone use a VPN this is already the case with age verification for adult content.

VPN wouldn't work. Whatsapp is tied to a mobile number so they would just blacklist all +44 numbers. No matter where you are, even if your an expat, it won't work....

I don't care what Meta does they are big enough to solve the issue.

I was talking about smaller messaging apps that can't just refuse to comply.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#138

Post by sangnoir »

rwaksmunski wrote: post #63
Quarrelsome wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's naive to think WhatsApp was bought for a different purpose. Sorry, is it naive to think that Facebook bought WhatsApp for its userbase and technology?

> Sorry, is it naive to think that Facebook bought WhatsApp for its userbase and technology? Well, no. Absolutely not. Until you notice the 20B pricetag. I'm not seeing 20B worth of ads on WhatsApp, are you?

Are you factoring in opportunity cost? Could an independent Whatsapp have cost Facebook >= $20B worth of revenue? Could Whatsapp have evolved into a more fully-fledged Social Network to rival Facebook? Ensuring the answer is "no" for Facebook is worth a lot more than $20B in my book.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#139

Post by Havoc »

Rarely a fan...but I've got to say hell yeah FB!

Not because FB as platform in particular but because I appreciate someone with weight telling the UK law makers that their insane ideas are insane.

Just the fact that there is a different position suggests that there is a question to be answered and thought about. Get everyone stop and think.

Re: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief

#140

Post by pgalvin »

acqbu wrote: post #106

Instead of removing end-to-end encryption, there may be alternative solutions to address law enforcement concerns. For example, law enforcement agencies could work with WhatsApp to develop lawful access mechanisms that allow them to access messages in specific cases where they have a legitimate need to do so. These mechanisms could be subject to strict oversight and transparency to prevent abuse.

If the messages are end-to-end encrypted, there is no way to do this. A backdoor or other mechanism means it is no longer end-to-end - some third party is involved.

Furthermore, the UK has a long history of such “strict oversight and transparency” hardly existing, when it comes to these matters, with numerous controversies with police and other agencies abusing their access to systems.

It is worth noting, however, that WhatsApp messages can generally be accessed with such a backdoor anyway. The majority of users backup their messages to iCloud or Google Drive, encrypted, with WhatsApp holding the key. Consumer tools already exist that can access these encrypted backups, and fetch the key from WhatsApp with nothing but a text message. A warrant to Google/Apple for the backup is all that is needed, apart from the small % of users who have enabled the new E2EE backups.

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