This year Whatsapp decided to use end-to-end encryption for all whatsapp messages in following of their concurrent Telegram. This to protect the privacy of all users and ensure the users that their private messages keep private.
This week Rob Bertholee, the CEO of the AIVD (Dutch national security agency) spoke out in an interview that the AIVD wants the power to crack the encryption of Whatsapp. According to the AIVD the increasing use of information-encryption leads to problems regarding to the prevention of terrorism. The ideal situation for the AIVD would be to have an oversight of the whole criminal network, provided by their phone network history.
But of course this raises again the security versus privacy discussion. How much privacy is your safety worth? Should the AIVD have insights in everyone’s personal messages to protect the country?
History doesn’t prove that spying is the right solution. Before Whatsapp decided to encrypt their messages, people made use of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) telephones. The government got the rights to crack these and since then they use them as prove in court for criminal cases. This should make the process more easy, but has so far disappointing results. A lot of criminals use aliases to stay anonymous and if they handled secure, the messages weren’t retraceble.
I would like to plead that privacy is not dead (yet) and that analyizing personal messages isn’t the right solution to protect citizens. Privacy is crucial for self-identity and autonomy. (Focault, 1977) (Wolf, R. D., & Heyman, R. ;2015).
“Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others” (Westin, 1968).
Also if the AIVD gets access to the messages, it is not sure how they’ll analyze the messages. Which false-positive ratio would be acceptable? And for what extend of time can they store the information? Another raising question is how they can ensure the security. Once there is a crack, the security of the messages is much harder to maintain.
What do you think? Would you let the AIVD read your messages? Does privacy still excist and if so, where do we draw the line?
http://nos.nl/artikel/2132835-aivd-plan-om-versleuteling-whatsapp-te-omzeilen-veel-te-gevaarlijk.html
Wolf, R. D., & Heyman, R. (2015). Privacy and Social Media. The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage.
Westin, A. F. (1968). Privacy and freedom. Washington and Lee Law Review,25(1), 166.
