Technology

Why am I not surprised? Whether there is no end-end encryption, they have a copy of every key, get the decrypted messages from the client, or can ask the client to surrender the key - it does not matter.

The point is that they never intended to leave users a secure environment. That would make the three latter agencies angry, and would bar themselves from rather interesting data on users.

It would not be surprising if found to be true. Difficult to see how the current business model operates at a profit. Their long term goal is the usual loss leader model until a monopoly is achieved and then slug us with ads, sell all the data, hike the price, etc. Sickening to watch them cosy up to fascists. They are probably supplying any and all the agencies with intelligence scraped from their user base. If Facebook were a person they would be a psychopath.

Shocking.

https://piefed.social/post/1699663#comment_9829227

Lol

Only a tech illiterate can expect privacy from a closed source program, open source is a requirement for both privacy and security.

Just assume any digital platform you're using isn't safe at this point.

I never used WhatsApp, but what made people think they used e2e? I'm way passed blindly believing what any company says they do without proof. I'd expect some kind of key or certificate management in the app, is that present?

Heck.. my default is still to think every website does plaintext password storage. I can't prove it, but neither can they. Stop storing my passwords in plaintext lemmy! /s

I would argue that the vast majority of users don't use WhatsApp for privacy. In the UK at least, it's just the app everyone has and it works. I've actively tried to move friends over to signal, to limited success, but honestly it can be escaped how encryption is not it's killer IP.

Im not a big fan of meta and WhatsApp, but these claims are a bit much. Any employee gets access to messages through a well documented internal process? "No separate decryption step is required" , so the WhatsApp CLIENT is not doing any actual e2e encryption and no attempt at reverse engineering or traffic analysis has ever seen that this is the case?

Where can one see, what these whistleblowers have actually published? I would expect to see this "simple process" and how that interface actually works... And I would expect any journalist to request some proof (show me the last message i sent to Alice) before trusting an anonymous whistleblower making such an extraordinary claim.

From what I heard so far, that anonymous whistleblower could be a troll or an ex-employee who just wants to cause some trouble for meta.

We should not trust anything blindly, even if it fits with our view of the world. Meta is an evil company, but as long as there is no indication for these specific allegations to be true, we should treat them as unfounded allegations.