WhatsApp Tells UK Government It’s Still Not Willing To Undermine Its Encryption
from the don't-make-me-tap-the-sign dept
The UK government is entertaining even more plans to undermine (or actually outlaw) end-to-end encryption. And it’s not gaining any support from the multiple services (and multiple people) these efforts would harm.
Both Signal and Proton have made it clear they’ll pull their services rather than weaken their encryption to comply with UK government demands. WhatsApp is saying the same thing — telling the UK government something it has already told it at least twice.
In 2017, WhatsApp made an unofficial announcement of its policies when UK law enforcement showed up with a demand to compel decryption of a targeted account. WhatsApp refused to comply and the UK government apparently decided not to press the issue. At least not directly.
Five years later, the UK government is still hammering away at encryption, adding more mandates to its steadily simmering Online Safety Bill. And WhatsApp told the UK government what it told it back in 2017: breaking encryption just isn’t an option. (In the form of a lawsuit challenging an Indian law, WhatsApp said the same thing to the Modi administration and its series of rights-violating internet-related laws.)
Another year has passed and the UK government still wants to get the Online Safety Bill passed. And, once again, Meta has surfaced to tell the government that it can pass all the laws it want, but none of them will force WhatsApp to undermine its encryption.
WhatsApp would refuse to comply with requirements in the online safety bill that attempted to outlaw end-to-end encryption, the chat app’s boss has said, casting the future of the service in the UK in doubt.
Speaking during a UK visit in which he will meet legislators to discuss the government’s flagship internet regulation, Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, described the bill as the most concerning piece of legislation currently being discussed in the western world.
The UK government doesn’t have any leverage here. WhatsApp will simply stop offering its service in the UK. As Cathcart points out, 98% of its users reside in other countries. And there’s no reason it should put all of its users at risk, just because the home to 2% of its user base is being stupid about end-to-end encryption.
Now, that 2% would probably like to have access to an encrypted messaging service, whether it’s WhatsApp, Signal, or Proton’s offering. Unfortunately for them, supporters of the bill don’t want them to have these options. But that’s not going to work out well for the government. Angering constituents tends to shift the leverage back their way, which means legislators are pushing a terrible bill from a position of weakness.
The potential for hefty fines only makes it more likely service providers will exit this market rather than give the government what it wants.
Under the bill, the government or Ofcom could require WhatsApp to apply content moderation policies that would be impossible to comply with without removing end-to-end encryption. If the company refused to do, it could face fines of up to 4% of its parent company Meta’s annual turnover – unless it pulled out of the UK market entirely.
If the options are providing a weakened service that harms all users or shelling out 4% of its income on a regular basis, the option these legislators failed to consider is really the only intelligent option: exiting the market.
And when that starts happening, the government is going to get an earful from the people it never bothered to listen to in the first place: domestic users of services these legislators are actively trying to destroy.
Filed Under: encryption, online safety bill, uk
Companies: meta, whatsapp
Comments on “WhatsApp Tells UK Government It’s Still Not Willing To Undermine Its Encryption”
The government will get alot of voters protesting if meta has to close down apps or services in the uk, people uses these services to have privacy and
protect themselves from hackers, they are used by business,s ,ngos not just individuals ,
making laws similar to hong kong,china, russia is not a good look for a so called democratic western government .
the problem is most people dont know about this law ,unless they read tech blogs .its not being discussed in the english media
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“The government will get alot of voters protesting”
Fortunately for the government, it has now criminalised all forms of protesting to the point where you can’t even be rude to the king in public.
So they don’t give a toss.
my prediction is that the bill will become law, and an encryptionless internet will be implemented, and then everything will be a hot mess, then they will either repeal the law (hopefully the likely outcome as users become absolutely PISSED about the whole idea), or they will faf about blaming the other party and having Brussles getting involved (again).
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Or Ofcom being super underfunded and unable to enforce 90% of the bill.
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“an encryptionless internet will be implemented”
Not going to happen. It’s all fun and games while people are pretending it only applies to “big tech” (by which people mean a specific subset of social media sites they have a beef, usually with for stupid reasons).
If they came close to trying to mandate actual encryption-free operation across the board, that would threaten banks and so many major industries so hard that the idea would be killed in an instant and the minister who tried actually mandating it removed from office.
As soon as the focus changes from “Facebook are being meanies because they won’t change the laws of mathematics to make our lives easier” to “no encryption places everyone who does business in the UK at risk, best avoid the place”, the conversation will quickly change as well.
There’s another party that the government is going to get an earful from as well: government users of those services. The bureaucrats will find that their now-unecrypted communications are more subject to intercept or extraction, causing additional liability.
And the spooks will set up their own encrypted communications apps … information about which will get leaked, drawing further attention to them. Lame justifications will pour forth. It might even get a rise out of the public, who were denied their own encryption.
The Forth: a confused premise
The loss of WhatsApp, Signal, or Proton’s service in the UK serves the goals of the Peers: no pesky encryption. Whether or not the pork bellies care or not is of no consequence to the Lords.
Pork bellies’ futures are to be bet on, for or against, or sold for the Lords breakfast.
The secret English debate in 1944 was whether to use gas
https://grahamthomasauthor.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/a-chemical-warfare-attack-on-tokyo/
or fry with Napalm
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748812000266
Biden signed off on $130b in New hydrogen warheads & new ICBMs. The Forth is a four-letter word
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That’s a nice word salad there.
Re: Re: Always good to get thoughtful feedback
I just don’t know who to thank for making time to critique my premise
This is hilarious.
Looks like a bright sky for VPN salespeople!!
Screw the apps, what about hardware such as Apple cell phones? Is the peerage willing to give up their Apple-branded toys, because they sure as shit are just as secure as any software app, if not more so.
How are they going to make every person currently living in GB turn in their Apple phones, and then make sure that every last one of them obeyed? I can just imagine Customs at the entry point – “Sir, you need to give us your Apple phone for the duration of your visit.” Can you spell “severe drop in tourism, the likes of which we haven’t seen since WWII”. (Here we’re ignoring the attendant problems of who foots the bill for a replacement phone, and the knock-on cost of interruptions to business while all this is going on.)
Yes, yes, I’ve now given them the idea. Or so you might think – I’d bet a lot of money that encrypted apps are only the first step, that outlawing hardware encryption is already in the works.
If the service is not based off n brutain and no offices or servers there they do not have to comply with British law
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That’s not how the bill is worded. If ANY service has users who are based in the UK the bill applies as part of it’s extraterrtory goals.
Which only makes the case that in order to not have to comply services will have to block UK users.
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Why would a non uk service bother blocking uk users. The uk has no control over services outside of the uk.
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Doesn’t matter. If a service serves UK users then the bill will apply to them. It doesn’t matter if they have offices or servers there or not.
The bar for the bill to apply to a company is if it’s used by a single UK user and if they don’t comply then OFCOM can request their service be blocked in the UK.
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Meta has people employed in the UK.
I wouldn’t trust the Tories with the key to a can of spam, nevermind the encryption keys to a major tech platform.
Thanks for sharing. It is very helpful for me and also informative for all those users who will come to read.