US, UK, and Australia Urge Zuckerberg Not to Extend Encrypted Messaging to Facebook and Instagram

[Pakaku]

Wow. Who the heck are we supposed to root for here? Sucker berg or the governments? (Ha! iPad autocorrect changed his name.)

I see it as rooting for the basic fundamentals of encryption itself, because it's not like the nature of encryption changes whether it's Apple defending it or Facebook defending it.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

Just delete Facebook and use Instagram.

Oh wait...

I do support Facebook in this, but let's face it, these companies boast of "privacy" until the government puts enough pressure on, then all bets are of.

 

[thekev]

My suggestion is simply keep popular platforms encrypted but companies can provide the encryption key at law enforcement request. .

The article specifically discusses end to end encryption, presumably using public key encryption. If you are encrypted end to end, then Facebook does not have a private key to decrypt anything. Regardless of the scheme, if Facebook can decode anything on the server side, it's not end to end in any meaningful sense.

 

[fairuz]

There's no excuse for forcing backdoors in.
Also, cmon, why e2ee the Instagram messages? You still trust Facebook in that loop anyway. All pain, no gain.

 

[fairuz]

E2E encryption makes sure messages stay private.

Unless you're managing the public keys yourself, it doesn't. You'd need to get public keys from peers in some trusted way to identify them, e.g. meeting in person, which of course isn't how it's usually implemented. Rather, the clients all trust some central authority (Facebook) for the keys.

It's still useful but definitely not as advertised. It makes it less likely for the service to screw up and leak your data since they have to go out of their way to intercept things. Also, two affected users with sufficient reverse-engineering skills could meet up and catch the authority in the act of spoofing the keys, but they'd have such a hard time proving it to others that practically it's very easy for FB to get away with snooping on select targets.

 

[0989382]

Well, unfortunately our government in the UK is already proving to be closer to our friends in China and North Korea in ‘not listening to the will of the people’, government knows best and all that carry on. We voted to leave the EU and there are actually people on the street trying to undermine democracy. No ifs, no buts. Simple question. Simple decision. Clear answer. End of.
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I must add, if you trust Facebook at all, you’re not a privacy or security advocate by nature!