Also on Friday, the US and UK announced the signing of a “world-first” data access agreement that will allow law enforcement agencies to demand certain data directly from the other country’s tech firms without going through their governments first. Facebook’s messaging app WhatsApp already employs end-to-end encryption, shielding the content of its 1.5bn users’ messages from the company itself. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Facebook has announced end-to-end encryption for all its messaging apps. Governments have often proposed such backdoors as a compromise measure, but security experts argue that it is impossible to provide limited access to encrypted communication without weakening privacy overall. But privacy advocates pushed back on the idea that a government backdoor was needed to keep people safe.

Source: The Guardian October 03, 2019 23:37 UTC