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What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

faq.whatsapp.com

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Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#21

Post by jorblumesea »

dman wrote: post #9

As a user I find this section very intriguing. ************************* "Can WhatsApp work with law enforcement without traceability? WhatsApp respects the important work law enforcement does to keep people safe. Our dedicated team reviews and responds to valid law enforcement requests. We respond to valid requests by providing the limited categories of information available to us, consistent with applicable law and…

In intelligence, the metadata around the messages are sometimes more important than the contents itself. Parallel reconstruction is absolutely a tool and often law enforcement can get what they need through other means. It's just another puzzle piece in an investigation.

For example:

who talks to whom

when a user comes online, is most active, and general traffic analysis patterns

what groups a user might be present in and how active they are

what are the type of contents of a specific message (image, text, video)

As other users have noted as well, it's unclear as to the data sharing agreements these large companies have with various government agencies. For example if an agency has data access to messages DB, what does end to end matter? End to end encryption usually means un-snoopable data in transit, not data at rest.

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#23

Post by smoldesu »

dman wrote: post #9

As a user I find this section very intriguing. ************************* "Can WhatsApp work with law enforcement without traceability? WhatsApp respects the important work law enforcement does to keep people safe. Our dedicated team reviews and responds to valid law enforcement requests. We respond to valid requests by providing the limited categories of information available to us, consistent with applicable law and…

I agree that this is pretty sketchy, but the US government has harassed Facebook time and memoriam. It doesn't come as any surprise to me that they're able to to use their leverage here to get user data the same way they get it from Google, Apple, and every other Top 500 company that incorporates in the United States.

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#24

Post by jkukul »

ProAm wrote: post #14
nicoburns wrote: post #11

It's such a shame that Facebook was allowed to buy WhatsApp (and Instagram). WhatsApp itself seems truly pro-privacy, but that counts for diddly-squat when it's owned by Facebook.

What do you mean 'allowed' (Im not being snarky, honestly curious please take the question as not an attack)? The creators just sold it, private company, private service they could have sold it to anyone they wanted. I think in hindsight they regret selling it to FB, but it's really hard to turn down billions of dollars.

Have you heard about antitrust laws? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

These types of laws exist to prevent monopolies being created after a M&A.

Whatsapp's acquisition was in fact investigated and approved both by relevant commissions in US and EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#25

Post by smoldesu »

Cantinflas wrote: post #12
dman wrote: post #9

As a user I find this section very intriguing. ************************* "Can WhatsApp work with law enforcement without traceability? WhatsApp respects the important work law enforcement does to keep people safe. Our dedicated team reviews and responds to valid law enforcement requests. We respond to valid requests by providing the limited categories of information available to us, consistent with applicable law and…

No need to break end to end encryption, they already control both ends. And the unencrypted backups

iMessage operates much on the same principals.

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#27

Post by spoonjim »

Ellipse0934 wrote: post #26

Can't whatsapp pull off a big brain time and disallow forwarding ? Then users must copy and paste messages, links and media. Hence every message is a source message.

The "Forwarded" note helps identify misinformation. If there's a message that says "2 Muslims came to my house yesterday, stole my baby, and ate her" and it comes from your friend you might actually believe it. If it says "Forwarded" you have a better signal that it's fake.

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#28

Post by bidirectional »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #3

I hate Facebook as much as anyone here on HN, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If keeping end-to-end-encryption also happens to be in the interest of some faceless multinational corporation, we can use their resources in this fight. We can go back to fighting Facebook once this is over.

I also dislike and don't trust Facebook, but I agree. I often have to remind myself that Facebook are just a business with dubious practices. They're not some evil entity hellbent on destroying privacy in every shape or form.

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#29

Post by justin_oaks »

bilbo0s wrote: post #10
eric__cartman wrote: post #2

Facebook talking about respecting human rights and privacy... If you want to make a truly secure messaging platform release the client and server side source code or gtfo.

Sometimes I wonder if "truly secure" messaging platform and "internet" messaging platform are incompatible. Is the reality that any internet based digital messaging platform is insecure in the long term. Eventually, your messages can be retrieved, traced, even tracked real time. I think if your information needs security, don't put that information on the internet.

The biggest obstacle to secure messaging is making it friendly to users.

All popular end-to-end encrypted messengers manage user's public keys for them. And usually provide the client code too. And may have unencrypted backups. And may have account recovery mechanisms that can be abused.

Each of those makes it easy for the user, but degrades security.

Re: What is traceability and why does WhatsApp oppose it?

#30

Post by stormdennis »

Cantinflas wrote: post #12
dman wrote: post #9

As a user I find this section very intriguing. ************************* "Can WhatsApp work with law enforcement without traceability? WhatsApp respects the important work law enforcement does to keep people safe. Our dedicated team reviews and responds to valid law enforcement requests. We respond to valid requests by providing the limited categories of information available to us, consistent with applicable law and…

No need to break end to end encryption, they already control both ends. And the unencrypted backups

Are you sure? You seem to be suggesting the Facebook could instruct whatsapp on my phone to snoop on my messages. Also my backups of Whatsapp are only on google drive as far as I know.
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