819
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
108 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A 10-month Commerce Department probe concluded Meta could view all WhatsApp messages in unencrypted form

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 2 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

For the bad actor to toggle that "switch", they would have to control the app.

Are you talking about physical control? Regardless, it's closed-source... There is nothing that says they can't also generate the keys on the other end that they had your devices generate. Outside of open source code that's buildable from source, they can claim whatever they want about lack of access to switches.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    Technically true.

    However, doing so would be perpetrating a fraud. If they denied the capability you're talking about in response to a warrant or subpoena, someone would be in contempt.

    I don't know if any corpo actually cares about such things, but I know that if you or I were to do this, we'd quickly find ourselves broke and possibly in prison.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    But my point is that Meta is committing fraud against the public for advertising WhatsApp as E2EE when it's not, as per this entire post...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    There is no indication that they can actually acquire the clear text of an E2EE communicatiom. without one of the ends being complicit in the process. There is no evidence of the fraud you refer to.

    That doesn't mean they are telling the truth, merely that they haven't been proven to have lied. They could release their source code tomorrow. That code could prove you are correct and they are liars. That code could prove that they are correct, and you were wrong.

    We don't have to resort to unfounded claims to justify criticism here. Proving their claims to be unverifiable is more damning than failing to prove they are committing fraud.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •