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Google, Facebook, WhatsApp and Others To Beef Up Encryption (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Tech giants including Google, Facebook, Whatsapp and Snapchat are looking to increase the privacy of user data by expanding their encryption features. The recent reports mark growing industry support for Apple in its fight to not allow authorities backdoor access into users' devices. Facebook has suggested that it is increasing privacy of its Messenger service, while its instant messaging app Whatsapp also confirmed that it would be extending its encryption offering to secure voice calls. Others reportedly joining the industry shift include Snapchat, which is working on securing its messaging service, and search heavyweight Google, which is currently developing an encrypted email project. From The Guardian's substantially similar story from which the above-linked article draws:
WhatsApp has been rolling out strong encryption to portions of its users since 2014, making it increasingly difficult for authorities to tap the service's messages. The issue is personal for founder Jan Koum, who was born in Soviet-era Ukraine. When Apple CEO Tim Cook announced in February that his company would fight the government in court, Koum posted on his Facebook account: "Our freedom and our liberty are at stake."
His efforts to go further still are striking as the app is in open confrontation with governments. Brazil authorities arrested a Facebook executive on 1 March after WhatsApp told investigators it lacked the technical ability to provide the messages of drug traffickers. Facebook called the arrest "extreme and disproportionate."
The sooner, the better on this front: as TechDirt points out, WhatsApp may be next on the list of communication tools to which the U.S. government would like to give the Apple Treatment.
Let's not celebrate replacing a nominally democratic republic with a corporate oligarchy. Bad things will happen when large corporations are completely above the law.
This is happening not just in support of Apple, but because the US has announced they will be using their surveillance infrastructure for law enforcement, not just antiterrorism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
All the US Government is going to do with this is force all of these companies to go overseas, or largely go out of business, because eventually the only ones left in the USA will be doing business only in the US.
Here's what the real issue is: the amount of effort spy/law enforcement agencies want or have to spend to be able to detect and solve crimes. And the fact that now the pendulum is swinging to where they have to get back to spending real time and effort to solve and prevent crimes.
For the last couple of decades, law enforcement / intelligence agencies have had the benefit of all this data and metadata simplifying their detection and solving of crimes. They were able to use all this technology to their advantage because they had access to everyone's communications, and everyone was putting more and more of their communications online or using centralized tools that the FBI could listen to.
As a result of that, the FBI got used to that capability, and thought that being able to solve a crime with only 2 guys tapping a phone should be the norm. Instead of say, having to put 5 guys undercover, inside a crime organization, or have more law enforcement officers on the corners of streets. When was the last time you saw a policeman "walking his beat"? Not any more.
And now the pendulum has swung the other way. Now that people have the tools to safeguard their communications, the FBI is finding that the levels of staffing or intelligence resources are not matching the capability of individuals to counter it.
Yet the FBI is not helpless. They did solve crimes before wiretaps and modern technology. Do you remember that? They are just unhappy that their outdated tools now are making them expend more effort to gather similar information that would help them solve crimes. It just has to be more manual.
No one said things would stay the same forever. And none of their arguments are highly principled -- they just want crime prevention and solving to be easier and cheaper. They have not said that they would never have foiled crime without technology. If that were true, why are there even field agents? Technology doesn't make it impossible, just like it wasn't impossible before the cell phone. It is totally within reason for people to adopt technology that makes some things easier to do their job, and other things harder for others to do their job - that's what technology is all about.
End to end encrypted... how? In theory, even if the messages are stored encrypted in the client, FB, et. al. could be forced to push a patch to add an ADK, not encrypt, or other means.
The ideal is to have the encryption layer separate from any messaging layer. This is why I like PGP/gpg. It encrypts/decrypts, and doesn't really give a care about what protocol is uses.