THE FBI can access WhatsApp and iMessage users’ personal information according to a new document – despite Facebook and Apple’s claims of privacy.
The report – first obtained by Rolling Stone – suggests that as long as the bureau has a warrant or subpoena they can access certain data.
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It goes on to describe how WhatsApp will give address-book access with a search warrant.
Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior staff technologist at the ACLU, said: “WhatsApp offering all of this information is devastating to a reporter communicating with a confidential source.”
His ACLU colleague Nathan Freed Wessler added: “For probably all of these platforms, if law enforcement gets its hands on somebody’s device, no amount of end-to-end encryption is going to protect the information on the device.”
Facebook originally said its Messenger service was getting end-to-end encryption in “2022 at the earliest” and now it’s pushed things back a whole year.
ICLOUD RISK
For Apple users their subscriber information, as well as information on what they looked up in iMessage, could be handed over with a court order.
If the user has backed up their messages in the Cloud then they could also be accessed.
Mallory Knodel of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Apple has encrypted iCloud but they still have the keys, and as long as they have the key, the FBI can ask for it.”
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, now renamed Meta Platforms.
It provides users with end-to-end encryption, in which messages are scrambled so that only their senders and recipients can read them.
Law enforcement, however, has long pressured the company for access to that information in order to investigate crimes such as terrorism or child sexual exploitation.
‘PRIVACY FOCUSED’
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said his apps are “privacy-focused.”
He has said: “I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever.
“This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook has said privacy is a “basic human right.”
The January 7 document is to be used by agents to determine what kind of information they can get from the messaging apps.
The Sun has contacted Facebook and Apple for comment.
A WhatsApp spokeswoman confirmed the FBI cannot access actual message content. But it can show when users are speaking to one another.
Apple did not comment when approached by Rolling Stone.
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