The New York Times reports that the Justice Department is facing trouble in the execution of a wiretap that’s being conducted through WhatsApp due to the service’s encryption.
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You may assume it wouldn’t come to this, but as recently as this past week, according to officials, the Justice Department hit a brick wall in a continuing criminal investigation. End-to-end encryption protects user data, messages in WhatsApp’s case, with only the sender and recipient able to access it. Since a year ago, WhatsApp added encryption to those conversations, making it impossible for the Justice Department to read or eavesdrop on the user’s communications, even with a judge’s wiretap order. “They’re waiting for the case that makes the demand look reasonable”. The end-to-end encrypted messages can’t be read by anyone, including WhatsApp.
Details are scant on this case but given this report Saturday it’s only a matter of time until more details emerge. Because the data regarding the wiretap is under seal, that is the only background information known about the case. While a federal judge approved a wiretap, WhatsApp’s encryption stood in the way.
In a odd twist, the government actually helped develop the technology behind WhatsApp’s encryption.
Apple’s senior vice-president of software engineering, Craig Federighi has called the court order asking the Cupertino-tech giant to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone, as one that takes device security back in time.
“WhatsApp can not provide information we do not have”, the company said this month when Brazilian police arrested a Facebook executive after the company failed to turn over information about a customer who was the subject of a drug trafficking investigation.
With this security upgrade, all android phone messages coursed through the app are now encrypted from the moment the message is typed all the way to its transmission process, through their own servers utilizing well respected, established, and open-source encryption techniques created by Open Whisper Systems. But contrary to the government’s claim that the case is about a single phone used by one of the perpetrators of the horrific attack in San Bernardino, a claim that FBI Director Comey has echoed, the court battle in San Bernardino is important specifically because it will have implications far beyond the one phone. “So while President Obama isn’t a fan of ‘absolutism” on the issue of encryption, most are fed up with a government talking on both sides of its mouth whenever it suits the political winds du-jour.
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That means that the arguments Apple has made in the San Bernadino case would be available to WhatsApp too.
