Many of you have probably seen the new update provided by WhatsApp including the end-to-end encryption. This means that only you and the person you are communicating with can read the messages you send. Your message gets encrypted when you send it and decrypted at the receivers’ end, meaning that it is still encrypted when stored on the servers of WhatsApp. This makes your message totally inaccessible to the company and whoever else might have access to the server.
Open Whisper Systems recently launched an encryption app called ‘Signal’ that uses similar guards to protect their users’ messages. Highly recommended by influential people like Edward Snowden and a variety of journalists, this app claims to be completely capable of protecting their data, even from themselves.
This is a good thing, wouldn’t you think? With all of the privacy issues already emerging in big data, we could use an app that encrypts our private messages. The government does not share this opinion. In the first half of this year, Open Whisper Systems received a subpoena for subscriber information from the state of Virginia. Two phone numbers had come up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia and in the court order they requested all data associated with these numbers. This data included web browsing histories, e-mail addresses, chat history and cookie data.
As aforementioned, the company cannot give them this information – even if they wanted to – simply because they do not collect this information from their users. Eventually, Open Whispers Systems turned over the only data they possessed: the date that the user registered and when he/she stopped using the app. This was the only data they could provide.
So what do you think? Do the benefits that we gain from having our messages encrypted, outweigh the opportunities for the government to use this data to potentially protect us from harm? Or do you think that they should do this without having access to all data available?
http://fortune.com/2016/10/04/signal-messaging-app/
http://www.nu.nl/internet/4331404/signal-overhandigt-minimale-gebruikersdata-verzoek-vs.html
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whatsapp-turning-end-end-encryption/
Dear Maira, thank you for your post! I think having our messages encrypted is a good thing, if you are looking to protect your privacy. However, for governments, who could be search for criminals or preventing possible terrorist attacks, not having access to this data could prevent them from doing their job properly. I think the government should be able to protect us without having all our data available, because as we saw before, some terrorists that were being watched still managed to plan an attack. Maybe what the government could do is allow encrypted messages, but make sure they can be accessed under VERY specific circumstances, in the sense that it could be dangerous for its citizens if it does not have access. However, I am not sure if it is possible to implement such a system, and it also takes away the idea of governments not being able to access your messages at all.