So this does not require Whatsapp/Facebook to proactively monitor its network and suspend users who share it (if it did and Facebook complied, it would disprove their claim that e2e encryption as they use it provides sufficient privacy).
I don't see how this could happen if that claim was true.
> The event next week:
> https://....
Such a mechanism allows governments to turn WhatsApp into a propaganda machine very easily, though, so I'm not sure if I would consider such a mechanism for my app if I were in a similar position.
I don't see the relation. They could (and I'm sure they do) attach a message id to the e2e-encrypted payload, shared between message sender and receivers. They could remotely delete messages by id, either by design or through a bug. None of this requires breaking e2e.
I mean, I'd argue that remote message deletion by id should not be possible (i.e. the client should not permit it) and certainly not without user notification, but that's a different matter.
While what you're saying is theoretically possible, I find it such a stretch that the only reasonable explanation save for some very unlikely bug is that message contents are indeed accessed in some form outside of our own devices.
What do you believe is the likely reason for the link to be deleted? Do you think that the organizer (your friend) did something at his end that caused the link to be deleted everywhere? I.e., he wanted to delete the link. In that case, it should be possible to reproduce this.
Or do you think Facebook or WhatsApp disapproved of the link and therefore deleted it? Was it something controversial or against Facebook rules? It could be possible to reproduce that as well if a group of users shares an equally controversial link.
The only thing that I think could potentially be controversial would be that it was a social gathering during the pandemic. The event page itself was and still is up. If it was deemed against FB rules I'd expect it to be reflected in some way on FB, and not just by deleting WhatsApp messages refering it.
I really can't give a good reason apart from "some ML model got triggered somehow, which prompted a human somewhere to look at it for a couple of seconds and click the delete button"
Our theory is that at least images on WhatsApp are human-reviewed, and one reviewer saw the credit card go through and took the opportunity.
We reversed the transaction and switched to Signal...
Eh ...
The same can surely be done with web links.
You made me envision this "end-to-end encryption" scheme:
- Alice sends a message to Bob. True to its word, WhatsApp encrypts the message on Alice's client and transmits it through to Bob without the WhatsApp server ever being able to read the message.
- Bob receives the message, which is decrypted for his viewing by his WhatsApp client.
- Bob's WhatsApp client reads the message and reports it back to the WhatsApp server.
Signal got this right.
In every copy of the app, WhatsApp explicitly says, "Your messages, calls and status updates stay between you and the people you choose. Not even WhatsApp can read or listen to them."
Of course, the scenario you describe is possible, but WhatsApp would be lying.
WhatsApp is already lying. It can, as demonstrated above.
This changed a few months ago.
Welcome to Article 11 & 13: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/
In the end it doesn't matter how it will be followed. If general monitoring is the only way to follow it then nobody needs to follow it. Simple as that.
"Yes, we recognize this requires setting up a monitoring infrastructure for compliance with the article, but we reserve the right to publicly condemn any company that uses that same infrastructure for self-serving purposes."
I always thought that they only managed the public keys.
I thought that your backup is stored in iCloud or Google Drive unencrypted. Facebook doesn't have direct access to that. You phone must be already logged in to those services.
Some folks will tell me "but it's end-to-end!" and it feels kinda like they're telling me that it's "what plants crave."
EDIT: if you don't believe me, turn on the setting, have a friend reinstall the app and watch the re-keying happen. It's indistinguishable from an attack unless you trust the broker. If you trust the broker, then why claim it's "end to end"? Also refer to the various articles that describe this behavior that WhatsApp says is by design.
Double EDIT: why is it this way by design? Because it would be a PITA if every time you replaced your lost phone your buddies got a warning that looked like "Either Dave has got a new phone or the NSA is attacking you. Resend ten years of hilarious memes and intimate conversations to whoever is on the other end?" Real cryptography comes with real inconveniences when you lose your keys. It's the same kind of headache with securing cryptocoins - if you lose the secrets you lose the money. Trusting an agent is the only way to escape, but it comes at a significant cost. Cryptocoin custodians like exchanges get attacked all the time. And communication broker/relays get lawful intercepts all the time.
AFAIK, it won't resend already received messages; if the other end didn't have a backup, these ten years of old messages are lost for that end. I don't know whether it will resend sent but not yet received messages, and it certainly will use the new key for new messages (but at that point, you already received the "key changed" alert).