14 DAY TRIAL // Two days ago WhatsApp announced end-to-end encryption for text and video calls in their Android and iOS apps. The company has been long working on this feature, but before you get too excited, you must know that authorities have already taken Facebook's WhatsApp upgrade into their sight.
US News quoted FBI General Counsel James Baker saying that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption "presents us with a significant problem" and that terrorists could "get ideas."
US authorities seem fixed on the idea of ending encryption usage in modern-day software, and they're on a media campaign that continues to paint the picture of "encryption is for terrorists only."
WhatsApp encrypts all your data, including the metadata
Also today, there were some rumors online that WhatsApp only encrypts the text/video data, and not the metadata. This opinion was reinforced by WhatsApp's terms of service which said:
“ WhatsApp may retain date and time stamp information associated with successfully delivered messages and the mobile phone numbers involved in the messages, as well as any other information which WhatsApp is legally compelled to collect. ”
These terms of service are probably not updated to reflect the service's recent upgrade, but we can assure you that WhatsApp's metadata is also encrypted.We can confirm this from Facebook's WhatsApp encryption protocol specification which specifically mentions that the service "Encrypts metadata to hide it from unauthorized network observers" and that "No information about the connecting user’s identity is revealed."
Why is this important?
This misunderstanding caused a small stir on social media because many people felt like Facebook tricked them when they said WhatsApp was encrypted. Why? Because metadata is as important as the actual conversations, if not more.
These small portions of information attached to each message were at the center of the massive NSA surveillance operation which Edward Snowden unmasked a few years back.
Many industry experts have commented that it would be impossible for the NSA to store all the actual data about phone and Internet conversations, and that metadata was more than enough to show connections between people, their patterns, and personal information.
Facebook looks poised to take on the FBI, just like Apple
Of course, we never suspected Facebook of any wrong-doing. The company has been recently at the center of a privacy scandal involving WhatsApp.
Back in early March, Facebook's vice president for Latin America was arrested for two days after it wouldn't, and technically couldn't, provide data about a series of WhatsApp conversations needed in a drug trafficking investigation.
As it stands right now, if the FBI would want access to any encrypted WhatsApp data or metadata, Facebook looks poised to put up a fight, just like Apple.