Barr Pushes Facebook for Access to WhatsApp Messages

[ancianita]

Last edited Fri Oct 4, 2019, 10:45 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: New York Times

Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes,” Mr. Barr, joined by his British and Australian counterparts, wrote in a letter to Mr. Zuckerberg that was reviewed by The New York Times and dated Friday. BuzzFeed News first reported on the letter.

Tech company officials have said that strong encryption is necessary to protect legitimate users of their platforms all over the world, including journalists and government critics. Facebook respects the role of law enforcement but believes people have a right to communicate privately online, said Andy Stone, a company spokesman.

“End-to-end encryption already protects the messages of over a billion people every day,” Mr. Stone said. “We strongly oppose government attempts to build back doors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere.”

With 1.5 billion users, Facebook’s WhatsApp is perhaps the world’s most commonly used encrypted communications platform. Privacy experts and tech company officials said that creating a back door would effectively destroy the secrecy of such platforms.



Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/us/politics/barr-whatsapp-facebook-encryption.html

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This article is on today's front page, above the fold.

Re Barr and allies' move, I prefer the word privacy to describe what tech is trying to protect, not "secrecy."

This could be the new globalism of government that Trump fecklessly tries to set up, along with the corporatists. It's one thing for big data to be drawn from our social media accounts, but it's another to be constantly surveilled by multiple governments.

Maybe it's not just Barr; maybe it's really that the Big Servers of central banks and finance want to keep scraping data from social media. Or both.

It's hard not to feel like a host to global parasites at this point. Hard to see where the dinosaurs (or elephants) are headed while we keep from being trampled.

[Maine-i-acs]

1. Maybe he's just keeping tabs on Jared

for ... security reasons.
this is Jared's favorite way to make off-the-record contact

[ancianita]

2. I think he's in it for the much bigger stakes of control than just Jared, though you're not wrong.

[ancianita]

3. Here's the link to Barr's letter to Zuckerberg.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212544439

[duforsure]

4. This is how Putin took over in Russia too,

Install corrupt people then impose their demands on businesses , demanding corrupt actions to benefit them, including forced playoffs to their election campaigns , which get funneled into their pockets. Then only the most corrupt survive , while they search for more corrupt people willing to pay them off with more. Putins worth is well over 200 billion from corruption, shakedowns , and playoffs to him. Trumps doing the same thing with businesses and foreign countries with hotel bookings, and other forms of playoffs. Did trump sell off foreign policies for favors and cash,I think it's a no brainier, and why he refuses his taxes be exposed, it started before he was elected.

[ancianita]

5. Great post. Thanks. I had only thought about it in privacy terms, but yeah, it's about Big Controls

now over billions of people's privacy.

And the crooks in government want to keep it.

[LiberalLovinLug]

12. I can't find a source, but I remember one of the first things Republicans did after their sweep

was to reverse Obama's bill to ban anyone who has engaged in criminal white collar behaviour in getting new federal government contracts.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. I'm not sure corporatists (interest groups) are really pushing this.

Most of the corporations that run these platforms are actually on the side of user privacy, because it attracts users.

Even Apple has been 'on our side' on this, with refusing to provide recovery back doors for iPhones and other Apple products.

[ancianita]

7. You'd be right, they're not. Silicon Valley doesn't go broke protecting privacy. Google is the Big

Data scraper with the back door, working with DHS, and so it's not as if Big Guv doesn't have some help. And the big companies have a lock on the American market that this govt wants access to for its own purposes. Like Trump selling our data out to Russia or other favorite 'players' of his.

Add to that, that when you've got right wingers trying to shrink government and law enforcement, they'll try to make techies start doing their leg work, as if they have the power to tell social media owners what to do.

If this lands in court, it'll be a big showdown over Americans' 4th Amendment rights led by a corporation, no less! And some globalist view of "cooperation" in apprehending child pornographers and terrorists -- as if they never apprehended them before the nets showed up.

[AtheistCrusader]

8. Good point.

And Google is big enough to be considered an interest group on it's own, whereas most are made up of many companies.

I eschew the Google platform whenever and wherever I can, for this and similar reasons.

[ancianita]

9. Me, too. When they ask me for a "password" for something, I don't bother and they still let me

do my net thing, anyway. Because, hey, they've scraped pretty much everyone by now.

[JohnnyRingo]

10. Barr sees our lives as an open book and he wants the library card.

Just ask him anything about the Trump administration though and he burns the book.

[ancianita]

11. Exactly right. Unlike with a library card, he just wants to walk in, take our open book and walk out

and not even have to check it through the librarian.