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A federal agent said WhatsApp's encryption is a lie. Then the investigation was shut down (www.techspot.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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A 10-month Commerce Department probe concluded Meta could view all WhatsApp messages in unencrypted form

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[–] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That's a little disingenuous...

  1. You receive an encrypted message.
  2. You decrypt the message.
  3. You report the message.
  4. You forward the decrypted message.

When you send a message, no E2EE scheme can prevent your recipient from forwarding the decrypted message to a third party.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago

    It's really important for people to understand that E2EE cannot protect the message portions that aren't between the ends themselves. The best encryption in the world can't help you if the person you're talking to is an undercover cop, because that "end" can do with the plaintext whatever they want, including record/store/forward the plaintext of any messages they then encrypt and send, or any messages they receive and then decrypt.

    That's not a flaw of the E2EE protocol itself, but is a limit to the scope of protection that E2EE provides.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Well, yeah, you can't control other people. Even if you use a walkie-talkie, they can still record your voice with a device. Ideally you should only be talking about safely publishable content, or with mature-enough individuals. We ultimately must settle for good-enough...

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