The Encryption Debate Is Over - Dead At The Hands Of Facebook
Found on Forbes on Sunday, 28 July 2019
The encryption debate was back in the news this week as Attorney General William Barr railed against “warrant-proof” encryption that he argued protects criminals and terrorists, continuing the same arguments that have been made for almost 30 years.
In Facebook’s vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms.
The company even noted that when it detects violations it will need to quietly stream a copy of the formerly encrypted content back to its central servers to analyze further, even if the user objects, acting as true wiretapping service.
Like it has been since the beginning, Facebook is the worst option for anybody. Not only does it sell all their users' privacy, but it does everything it can to stop users from protecting themselves. With a bit of luck however, this will fuel alternative open source software and hardware.