WhatsApp promised privacy to users, but it deceived everyone. Billions of people's correspondence is under threat
Not much is known about a wide range of readers, but it is highly respected in the professional world of online media , the most popular messenger on the planet WhatsApp , which is used by more than two billion people. Journalists found that the company Facebook owns the Messenger has the right of access to users ' messages despite all the assertions in complete secrecy of correspondence , investigators allege that Facebook is no longer a long time social network tried to make the world more easily and make people closer to each other. How WhatsApp reads the correspondence of billions of users and whether Mark Zuckerberg is really building an " evil empire " - in the article "Lenta.ru".
In the summer of 2021, a federal court in New York state sentenced Natalie Mayflower Sour Edwards, a former Treasury employee who had been affectionately dubbed May by the American press, to six months in prison.
The familiar position of journalists is understandable: May has been accused of leaking information to reporters about banking transactions related to the financing of the Russian Embassy in the United States. The documents referred to Richard Gates, Donald Trump's aide, and his campaign headquarters, Paul Manafort, as well as a prison torture survivor Maria Butina.
The conclusive evidence of May's guilt during the hearing was metadata obtained by the US court from Facebook: case documents show hundreds of messages Edwards exchanged with a BuzzFeed reporter using an "encrypted application". The content of the messages was not presented, however, a clear correlation was established between the moments when the interlocutors were online and the exact time of posting sensational material on the publication's website. After a while, it became known that the app where Mai and the reporter were messaging in 2018 is WhatsApp .
Who reads WhatsApp messages and how?
Four years before these events, Facebook bought WhatsApp , the deal amounted to $19 billion. That's 500 million users and almost exhausted growth opportunities. Zuckerberg promised to reach a billion users (and did), kill simple SMS (and he did) and stated that nothing would ever change for regular users of the service. Finally, the businessman lied.
We delve into important issues, highlighting abuse of power and betrayal of public trust. And we will do this until the authorities begin to answer ”- this is how the journalists of the copy describe their task. There are about a hundred of them in total. They work all over the world, and the main topics for them are war crimes, corrupt officials, problems of migrants, the environment, the violation of human rights and the use of technology to the detriment of humanity. ProPublica journalists have received dozens of awards for their work, among them seven Pulitzer Prizes (journalistic and literary).
Largely for this reason, the ProPublica investigation of Facebook and WhatsApp has attracted the attention of a large number of international media, many of which have reprinted their text without interruption. Journalists have accused WhatsApp of spying on users and the lack of end-to-end encryption technology, which the messenger's owners insist on. Its essence lies in the fact that third parties cannot in any way gain access to other people's messages: when sent, they are encrypted at random, and only then decrypted on the recipient's device.
Zuckerberg has been dreaming of introducing end-to-end encryption technology for several years; It appeared on WhatsApp in 2016. Five years later, the technology was adapted to Facebook . Between the two, Zuckerberg spoke to the US Senate. Historic session went down in the history of the American press as "Zuckerberg explains the Internet to senators."
"We don't see any content on WhatsApp , it's fully encrypted," said the company's head . In response to an additional question, he repeated with slight indignation: “Senator, Facebook systems do not see the content of messages transmitted via WhatsApp .”
She succeeded in proving that Zuckerberg lied to the Senate. The journalists found at least 1,000 people scattered across offices in the United States, Ireland and Singapore. They actually act as intermediaries: they look at the millions of messages every day that WhatsApp users have complained about .
This is done using tools developed by Facebook . To assess the context, not only the controversial message is sent, but also the previous four messages. They are also previewed by an AI-based system.
All of these people are low-skilled wage workers who earn $16.5 an hour (about three thousand a month - for a large American city, that's not a lot of money). Officially, they are hired by the company Accenture , which is one of the partners of not only Facebook , but also about one hundred of the largest companies in the world. Thus, hundreds of people can access the individual messages of the supposedly most secure messenger.
These jobs are referred to as "Content Coordinator" in job listings, and Facebook and WhatsApp are not mentioned in any way. The job documents also refer to the job as "Content Moderator". The appointees must answer all questions from strangers who work for Accenture. An extensive non-disclosure agreement is also signed.
The fact of being able to read someone's messages is very concerning to journalists. The question that hangs in the air when reading all the material is "Is there end-to-end encryption at all?"
Draws attention to a letter addressed to the US Securities Commission, which was at the disposal of the publication. In it, an unknown informant (most likely, this is not just an anonymous, but a secret employee of the body itself or special services) warned that WhatsApp is actively engaging third-party contractors and artificial intelligence systems to work with the content. With this in mind, the investigators concluded that the allegations that the correspondence in WhatsApp is completely confidential are false.
Metadata tells us everything about a person's life
" Artificial Intelligence examines the non - encrypted data collected by WhatsApp about its users. This includes their names and profile pictures and phone numbers, photos and information level phone battery, language, time zone , and the unique identifier for the phone and cellular IP address and the strength of the wireless signal and operating system
All this is called "metadata". It can be compared to the information that was on the outside of the envelope in the pre-digital era: the names and addresses of the sender and recipient, as well as the postal stamp, showing when and where the message was sent. The content of the message does not appear to be visible, but there are a lot of important details on the envelope.
To non-professionals, collecting metadata seems like a pointless exercise, but in fact, even intelligence agencies are involved in it. For example, it was the illegal collection of metadata by the US National Security Agency (NSA) that became the basis for the scandal
The National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency
That the US police used WhatsApp metadata. Investigators have uncovered more than a dozen court orders that allowed the Department of Justice to require Facebook for the metadata of WhatsApp users . One of them relates to the case of Natalie (Mae) Edwards, who, according to the case file, "considered WhatsApp to be a completely secure messenger" This happened in at least three other countries - the UK, Brazil and India.
Journalists say WhatsApp has reduced the amount of unencrypted information it has shared with law enforcement for years. - In the User Agreement, WhatsApp guarantees that the person has complete control over their metadata. It states that users can decide who can see information about their name, profile picture, or last login date. But no matter what settings the user selects , WhatsApp collects and analyzes all this data. This fact is not mentioned in the User Agreement.
Build an empire
“I believe the future is encrypted services, thanks to which people can be sure that only they can see the messages they send to each other. I hope we can bring this future closer. It will be built in the same way that WhatsApp is now built,” Zuckerberg wrote in 2019, A year later the court gave statements on the case of Natalie Edwards.
Questioning the fact that end-to-end encryption exists on WhatsApp at all, they condemn the head of Facebook for creating an unethical device that secretly collects user data. They do not speak directly, but they clearly indicate the motives that Zuckerberg is seeking.
See also the
No comments:
Post a Comment