US authorities reportedly investigate claims that Meta can read encrypted WhatsApp messages | WhatsApp
It has been reported that US authorities are investigating allegations that Meta can read the encrypted chats of users on the WhatsApp messaging platform owned by Meta.
The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week alleging that Meta “had access to the so-called ‘private’ communications of almost all WhatsApp users.”
Meta denied the claim BloombergHe called the lawsuit’s claim “categorically false and absurd.” He claimed that the claim was a tactics Supporting NSO Group, an Israeli firm that developed spyware used against activists and journalists and recently lost a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp.
The firm, which filed a lawsuit against Meta, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan last week, attributes the claim to the following: anonymous “Brave” whistleblowers from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa.
Quinn Emanuel is helping to represent NSO Group in a separate lawsuit. judgment Last year, a US federal court ordered WhatsApp to pay $167 million for violating its terms of service by distributing the Pegasus spyware to more than 1,400 users.
“We are imposing sanctions on Quinn Emanuel for filing a meritless lawsuit designed entirely to make headlines,” Meta spokesman Carl Woog said in a statement. “This is the same firm that tried to help lift an injunction banning NSO from operations to target journalists and government officials with spyware.”
Adam Wolfson, a partner at Quinn Emanuel, said: “Our colleagues’ defense of NSO on appeal has nothing to do with the facts disclosed to us and which form the basis of our lawsuit for WhatsApp users worldwide.
“We look forward to moving forward with these allegations and note that WhatsApp’s denials are carefully worded in a way that does little more than deny the central allegation in the complaint – that Meta is able to read WhatsApp messages, regardless of its claims about end-to-end encryption.”
Steven Murdoch, professor of security engineering at UCL, said the case was “a bit strange”. “It seems to go mostly to tipsters, and we don’t know much about them or their credibility,” he said. “I would be very surprised if what they claim is actually true.”
He said that if WhatsApp was indeed reading users’ messages, it would likely be discovered by staff and that would be the end of the matter. “It’s very difficult to keep secrets within a company. If something this scandalous had happened, I think it’s very likely that it would have been leaked from someone within WhatsApp.”
The Bloomberg article cites reports and interviews from US Commerce Department officials who claim the US is investigating whether Meta was able to read WhatsApp messages. However, a spokesman for the ministry said these allegations were “unfounded”.
WhatsApp it bills itself As an end-to-end encrypted platform; This means that messages can only be read by the sender and receiver and are not decoded by a server in the middle.
This contrasts with some other messaging apps, such as Telegram, which encrypt messages between the sender and their own servers, preventing third parties from reading the messages but, in theory, allowing those messages to be decrypted and read by Telegram.
A senior executive from the tech industry told the Guardian that WhatsApp’s vaunted privacy “leaves a lot to be desired”, given the platform’s willingness to collect metadata about users, such as profile information, contact lists and who they talk to and when.
But “the idea that WhatsApp could selectively and retroactively access its content” [end-to-end encrypted] “Individual conversations are mathematically impossible,” he said.
Meta’s Woog said: “We are imposing sanctions on Quinn Emanuel for filing a false lawsuit designed entirely to make headlines. WhatsApp’s encryption will remain secure and we will continue to stand against those who seek to deny people their right to private communication.”
