134
[Facebook] Messenger is finally getting end-to-end encryption by default - The Verge
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
134 points (90.4% liked)
Technology
60021 readers
3299 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Rigorous? Not really. The decryption takes place client side in-app, and they simply process it before it hits the display. Just because it's encrypted in transit doesn't mean fb doesn't have ita greasy paws all over it.
The whole point (arguably) is to avoid another situation like when the girl got nailed for an abortion and the mother got charged with facillitating or something because Facebooks chat records between them were accessible to Facebook -> Government upon request/warrant/etc.
I get Facebook sucks but lets try to think clearly about this. Otherwise I wouldn't be questioning your points but this is a palpable issue that embarassed them and laid bare how dangerous and rickety the whole setup was
They claim E2EE. No third party breaks it. Law enforcement is appeased.
But their closed-source app could still be analyzing the messages before encrypting. We wouldn't know, because it's closed source.
They could still argue it's E2EE, as it was encrypted on one end and decrypted on the other.
Facefuck and Zuckerdick get no benefit of the doubt - not only have they not earned it, they've demonstrated they are untrustworthy.
But if they have access to the content in that way, they will be retaining it or manipulating it in some retainable way, the fruits of which are automatically up for grabs via legal request/warrant.
The moment it becomes plaintext for them or they have any access to non-ciphertext, its fair game for the governement. The whole point of this (or at least part of it) is to avoid a repeat of the mother/daughter abortion" conspiracy" that has already caused them a lot of problems and even less trust than previously. And it was super predictable.