Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K. Police

[steven36]

Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter.

 

 

The accord, which is set to be signed by next month, will compel social media firms to share information to support investigations into individuals suspected of serious criminal offenses including terrorism and pedophilia, the person said.

 

Priti Patel, the U.K.’s home secretary, has previously warned that Facebook’s plan to enable users to send end-to-end encrypted messages would benefit criminals, and called on social media firms to develop “back doors” to give intelligence agencies access to their messaging platforms.

 

The U.K. and the U.S. have agreed not to investigate each other’s citizens as part of the deal, while the U.S. won’t be able to use information obtained from British firms in any cases carrying the death penalty.

 

Details of the accord were reported earlier by the Times.

 

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[steven36]

UK and US set to sign treaty allowing UK police “back door” access to WhatsApp and other “end to end encrypted” messaging platforms

 

UK police will be able to force US-based social media platforms to hand over users' messages, including those that are "end to end encrypted," under a treaty that is set to be signed next month.

 

According to a report in The Times, investigations into certain serious criminal offenses, including pedophilia and terrorism, will be covered under the agreement between the two countries.

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a large splash in March when he committed to encryption for Facebook's key messaging services, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

 

The UK government has been skeptical of Facebook's encryption plans, imploring the firm to create "back doors" which would enable intelligence agencies to gain access to messaging platforms for matters of national security. Under the planned treaty, neither the US or UK would investigate the other country's citizens.

 

The news of the agreement between the US and UK is sure to ramp up discussion of the effectiveness of "end to end encryption" when implemented by large corporations. Facebook is currently being investigated by numerous nations and states for privacy violations, which may make it difficult to ensure that encryption equals true data privacy and censorship resistance.

 

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[frankl1n]

I never have and never will employ these "social platforms". The internet to me has always been an enjoyable thing, why mess it up with trauma and drama!

[zanderthunder]

15 hours ago, steven36 said:

Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter.

 

Well, expect a surge of Telegram usage after the "treaty" signed. Too bad that they missed another popular messaging service.

 

Until then, privacy blown up because of them.

[steven36]

3 hours ago, Edward Raja said:

 

Well, expect a surge of Telegram usage after the "treaty" signed. Too bad that they missed another popular messaging service.

 

Until then, privacy blown up because of them.

Telegram is closed source and requires a  mobile phone number  , I'm sorry but i don't give internet companies  my phone number at all. And really you can't trust German owned servers ether .

 

German Officials Think German Citizens Need Less Security, More Encryption Backdoors

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190530/17355942306/german-officials-think-german-citizens-need-less-security-more-encryption-backdoors.shtml

 

 

Plus here is another big  caveat it gives noobs a false sense of security

Quote

Telegram doesn’t use end-to-end encryption by default, something the FBI has advocated for. “There are many Telegram users who think they are communicating in an [end-to-end] encrypted way, when they’re not because they don’t realize that they have to turn on an additional setting

 

I use open source XMPP witch have servers all over the world i found a sever that i was comfortable with there privacy policy (no logging)  in a country were the USA or UK has no pull.  Then i use open source end to end encryption with it.

 

. When James Comey was pushing for back doors  in Proprietary operating systems  he said Open source would still be a problem.  Even if they got them  they would be no way to impose them fully without banning open source that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors and  for the UK Proprietary operating system vendors (Google , Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons.

 

Take heed to what the people who pushed for them. said about it. Closed source is not the answer it's a world wide problem  . As far as messengers most all of them use closed source servers were never no good no way .

 

The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier

 

PRISM is a warrantless wiretapping program that operates around the clock, vacuuming up emails, Facebook messages, Google chats, Skype calls, and the like. Government agents do not review all of the information in real-time — there’s simply too much of it. Instead, the communications are pooled together and stored in massive NSA, FBI, and CIA databases that can be searched through for years to come, using querying tools that allow the government to extract and examine huge amounts of private information.

 

The NSA Continues to Violate Americans' Internet Privacy Rights

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/nsa-continues-violate-americans-internet-privacy

 

[zanderthunder]

Well, no one is safe then.

[steven36]

We need decentralized communication, now.

 

The U.S. and the U.K. have formed a treaty, forcing WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media platforms to hand over the encryption keys of certain individuals, allowing these authorities to read their private messages.

 

This treaty has disturbing implications. WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol, which guarantees end-to-end encryption, preventing even their employees from reading your confidential messages. This means the only way WhatsApp could comply with these demands is by fundamentally altering their software in contradiction to the Signal protocol.

 

Consider being forced to remove the lock on your door to allow the NSA, the FBI, or the police to come visit anytime without a notice, warrant, or probable cause. This will render the online communications of everyone less secure, not just those of suspected criminals.

 

The U.S. government already forces companies to surrender any collected user data at will. They are now compelling businesses to undermine their security and create backdoors, thus further violating the privacy of their citizens. This new treaty is leading the U.S. in the direction of Australia’s ban on encryption, which was, on its own, an unprecedented assault on privacy.

 

The two governments claim this will only be used against suspected terrorists, pedophiles and other serious criminals. However, James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, perjured himself by making the same claim, under oath, to an unaware U.S. Congress. Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA documents later proved his statements false. For decades, the privacy of millions of innocent Americans has been violated in the name of security, and things are only getting worse.

 

Decentralization is paramount to restoring privacy and freedom to the internet. As long as there are centralized service providers for communication platforms, the U.S. will use them to tighten its authoritative grip, silencing dissent with FISA gag orders and threats of shutting down their services.

 

Matrix is a secure and decentralized communication protocol. This specification is an open standard designed to make privacy and security the default of the web. Riot is one of the leading open source implementations of Matrix, providing end-to-end encrypted private chats, group chats, and VoIP in a decentralized manner.

 

Although Riot has made significant progress in the past few months, there is still a long way to go before it becomes a suitable drop-in replacement for platforms such as WhatsApp or Discord. The single greatest factor that is holding back mass adoption of decentralized and privacy-oriented applications is the lackluster user experience.

 

Start using Riot. Create an account, make an encrypted room, invite some friends and send some messages. Take note of every bug, typo or general inconvenience, and file an issue on the Riot GitHub repository. If you are a programmer, contribute to the project (open source development looks great on a resume). If you have the means, donate to the Matrix Foundation.

 

The usability of Riot must improve. The importance of “it just works” cannot be understated in bringing privacy and security to the masses. Try it out, get involved, and help make the internet a better place.

 

This is not a sponsored article. This is a call to action —  to make privacy and decentralized applications the norm.

 

This post was co-authored by John Boyer and Nick.

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