WhatsApp Balks at India's Demand To Break Encryption (venturebeat.com) 146
An anonymous reader shares a report: As WhatsApp scrambles to figure out technology solutions to address some of the problems its service has inadvertently caused in developing markets, India's government has proposed one of its own: bring traceability to the platform so false information can be traced to its source. But WhatsApp indicated to VentureBeat over the weekend that complying with that request would undermine the service's core value of protecting user privacy. "We remain deeply committed to people's privacy and security, which is why we will continue to maintain end-to-end encryption for all of our users," the company said.
The request for traceability, which came from India's Ministry of Electronics & IT last week, was more than a suggestion. The Ministry said Facebook-owned WhatsApp would face legal actions if it failed to deliver. "When rumours and fake news get propagated by mischief mongers, the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability. If they remain mute spectators they are liable to be treated as abettors and thereafter face consequent legal action," the government said. India is WhatsApp's largest market, with more than 250 million users. The country is struggling to contain the spread of fake news on digital platforms. Hoax messages and videos on the platform have incited multiple riots, costing more than two dozen lives in the country this year alone. Allowing message tracing, though, would likely undo the privacy and security that WhatsApp's one billion users worldwide expect from the service. Bringing traceability and accountability to WhatsApp would mean breaking end-to-end encryption on the platform, the company told VentureBeat.
The request for traceability, which came from India's Ministry of Electronics & IT last week, was more than a suggestion. The Ministry said Facebook-owned WhatsApp would face legal actions if it failed to deliver. "When rumours and fake news get propagated by mischief mongers, the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability. If they remain mute spectators they are liable to be treated as abettors and thereafter face consequent legal action," the government said. India is WhatsApp's largest market, with more than 250 million users. The country is struggling to contain the spread of fake news on digital platforms. Hoax messages and videos on the platform have incited multiple riots, costing more than two dozen lives in the country this year alone. Allowing message tracing, though, would likely undo the privacy and security that WhatsApp's one billion users worldwide expect from the service. Bringing traceability and accountability to WhatsApp would mean breaking end-to-end encryption on the platform, the company told VentureBeat.
side with the authorities here (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:side with the authorities here (Score:5, Interesting)
All WhatsApp need to do is attach unique identifiers to messages when created so that when forwarded they can be traced back to the source
This is sort of why separation of powers and freedom of speech is so very vital. Yes, your example would be a valid reason for a court order and tracing, if it were possible.
Of course, in a country where heads of state regularly assassinate political enemies, such tracing helps them too, and if there is a way to do it, a government can likely figure it out.
Even in the US we just had our leader threaten to cancel security clearances of those who spoke out against him, which for some in the private sector, who may do unrelated work that requires a security clearance, well, that would mean they are out of work for exercising freedom of speech. He has also threatened to open up libel laws and various other ways to get even. Any republican who speaks against him gets replaced and he has like a 90% approval rating among republicans who say they are defending freedom.
I'm not saying we shouldn't track these people down. I'm just saying you get the bad with the good. Encryption was originally classed as a munition, and in some ways it still is. Encryption these days is almost a requirement to be able to speak freely in some areas, since otherwise you might get reprisal from your boss or someone in government.
Hell look at Peter Strok (sp?) Admittedly they didn't use encryption. He just didn't think they would start searching all his work texts, but he was basically guilty of seeing Trump run for office, forming opinions, and not significantly letting those opinions affect his work. Certainly any aid in tracing a message back to its source could have far reaching consequences in the future.
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you are misunderstanding. You do not need to record anything within the encryption or about the user and this doesn't provide any mechanism to view the messages themselves. merely a endpoint that the message originated from. the company has no keys to view the message so even if they wanted to they can't provide access to the message itself or for that matter it doesn't even need to record that the message was even sent, all they store is tracability endpoints. e.g. GUID 1 = client a, GUID 2 = client b, the
Re:side with the authorities here (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you actually read what the parent poster wrote?
If you gain the possibility to track villains, you gain the possibility to track dissidents and opponents as well.
It doesn't matter if you can *directly* see the message, just as it didn't matter with the text saying kidnappers are at large to steal your children. In both instances, once the cat is out of the bag, you could trace the message back to its origin. Whether it's a text of a scammer or of a whistleblower.
It's not difficult to comprehend, no?
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Yup, but genuine dissidents can go the extra mile. Use something else than whatsapp, something not used by the unwashed masses. (vpn, ssh, tor,...) They are trying to do something about 'mob rule', so they need accountability for what 'the masses' uses. Apparently, these masses uses whatsapp.
How do we decide who gets to use the technology that disallows tracking, and who has to use the technology that tracks them? The government? Or will each person decide on their own if their cause is criminal (in which case they must allow themselves to be track), or for the better good of society (in which case they can justify use of the non-trackable technology)?
It's a real good plan. Just a few kinks to work out.
Re:side with the authorities here (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand this looks both reasonable and quite easy to implement.
On the other hand ... what if this wasn't India. What if this was an oppressive regime which wants to arrest/kill dissenters?
If they have the message ID of one person, they can track everyone that person was in contact with, identifying their entire "cell".
All they would need is a court order.
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Those two sentences are at odds with each other.
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I understand how that sounded like a good idea in your head, trust me, it is a slippery slope. News and ad board campaigns to teach the public is a better solution imho.
you mean the solution they have been trying for months and has been completely unsuccessful? accountability is the only way to prevent the spread of these types of rumours, remembering most of these rumours target specific very real fears that many in remote indian communities have.
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Education takes years, but is a long-term solution.
Forcing weak encryption or adding tracking to an information-system is only an ill-fated attempt at a stop-gap measure that will only be circumvented and fail, and leads to a slippery slope of governments eroding freedom of speech.
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> the only way
Citation needed. This whole thing is like the flame wars over "the solution to spam".
I have a different "solution". Hold the policeman of the village "accountable", instead.
Interesting, however that this is modded up. WTF?
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realistically traceability is the only real option, education and ad boards don't work when there really are people out there kidnapping there children, so why would they believe that some warnings are fake? The alternate option will be sites/apps like WhatsApp that refuse traceability will be shutdown in india (they have already had to disconnect regions temporarily from the internet to stop the spread of rumours).
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> Certainly hasn't worked in the UK or the US, perhaps there are other better education systems somewhere?
For humanities sake, I certainly hope so.
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> the only real option
You (or other ACs) keep posting this. Unfortunately, I think it does mean what you think it means.
That doesn't mean it's correct, however. No matter how many mod points you or your supporters have.
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The US is a shithole country with a police force that acts no differentthen the German SS during WW2. And that same police force (most notably by the FBI) is waging a campaign against encryption too so they can more effectively attack anti-elite activists.
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tracability with a warrant
I thought you just asked me to side with the indian government, are you talking about a different one now?
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What's the value of a warrant if they are rubber stamped like in the US?
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The illusion of due process.
Re:side with the authorities here (Score:4, Interesting)
I smell BS!
What'sApp is by no means anonymous. You can see exactly who sent you the message. So, the procedure is as follows. Arrest rioters. Access rioter's phones. See who sent them the message(s) that kicked off the riots. Get a warrant for those phones. Iterate that until you converge on the offender.
If that's not good enough, ask What'sApp to create What'sAppIndia which tells the user that due to demands from their government they (and only they) will have Big other invited to the party and if they don't like it, they should speak to their government about it.
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It just relies on enough people keeping their messages. The benefit is that it doesn't allow Big Brother to quietly track everything, it has to be overt and the effort required restricts it naturally to serious incidents. Everyone who ends up involved was either a rioter or someone who passed on information that caused a riot.
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The benefit is that it doesn't allow Big Brother to quietly track everything.
neither does a unique identifier only stored client side with the message and better still it doesn't subject thousands of people to privacy invasive searches..
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And so they can find out who originated a bunch of messages all at one time quietly and cheaply rather than with a noisy effort that might make them justify the action.
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> All WhatsApp need to do is attach unique identifiers to messages when created so that when forwarded they can be traced back to the source
Never heard of copy/paste, eh? Wow, this really, really reminds me of the "solution to spam" wars... Yes, I'm that old...
Re: side with the authorities here (Score:1)
Not exactly hard to get around. You use a stolen or burner phone to seed the message to your group of culprits. This is what they are probably doing anyway. If you are going to trace every hop along the forward, then you lost a lot of privacy.
However, it makes it easy for corrupted people in power to trace anyone who is critizing or going against them. Correction in Indian politics is an accepted norm. The few defense lines are reporters, and whistleblowers. They use WhatsApp for its privacy. Lose that
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what they need to know is who started the whole shitshow
It was started by Vishnu.
Really, this is an insoluble problem. Because the purpose of religion is to cultivate unquestioning followers. And any attempt to punish their leaders or remove their ability to SWAT an enemy is going to be met with at least as much violence as the occasional butchered cow.
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I can already see where you're going here. You're about to suggest they launch a huge public service campaign, and education reforms, to remind people how important critical thinking is, and that across-the-board, a modern society can't take seriously anything that isn't solidly based on evidence.
You don't see it as necessary
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you ill be disappointed to hear then many of the people injured or killed were foreigners not Indians. One of the common incidents is a small community is told the backpackers coming to their area are not backpackers but child kidnappers looking to steal children and sell them into slavery (another common problem in india). The village then pounces on the next unsuspecting foreigners that turn up and beat them to death, end result dead foreigners and poor people having their only bread winners sent to jail.
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boo hoo the "breadwinners" are in jail ... for murder.
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If an anonymous "tip off" with no evidence is enough to incite you to murder I have no sympathy
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If an anonymous "tip off" with no evidence is enough to incite you to murder I have no sympathy
And if a country is full of such people, it's this country's problem and not ours. We shouldn't give up our freedoms, cripple our technical tools and ruin our online experience to solve this country's problems. India should educate its population, not join the dark forces of censorship and privacy invasion.
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Let me rephrase that:
If an anonymous 'rumour' with no evidence is enough to incite you to murder I have no sympathy
People need to be taught skepticism (Score:2)
In the present infowars environment, the solution cannot be to blame messaging and web platforms, and enforce massive compulsory censorship. That censorship itself is much too powerful an infoweapon that is way too vulnerable to abuse.
Instead, people need to be immunized against rampant disinformation, through better education.
For adults, a "bootcamp"-like remedial education, perhaps, strongly suggested for everyone.
Collectively, we need to learn how to rationally form our belief strengths, how to avoid or
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Maybe they should just watch their kids to make sure they aren't kidnapped.
Killing someone when you have NO EVIDENCE they have done something is NOT JUSTIFIABLE no matter what. There is 0 sympathy from me. And no I have not lived a sheltered life, so knock off the personal attacks
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having your loved ones taken from you without warning any day or night to be sold into slavery, raped or murdered
You basically described CPS and poor people.
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This is the kind of sentence where I'm not sure if you're serious or trolling. Are you suggesting these criminals deserve some sympathy?
These people had deadly, malicious intent. Nobody ever "just works someone over a little" unless they're also willing to kill them, ever. If this sounds strange to you, then I think we have found one of
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you ill be disappointed to hear then many of the people injured or killed were foreigners not Indians. One of the common incidents is a small community is told the backpackers coming to their area are not backpackers but child kidnappers looking to steal children and sell them into slavery (another common problem in india). The village then pounces on the next unsuspecting foreigners that turn up and beat them to death, end result dead foreigners and poor people having their only bread winners sent to jail.
And you wonder why people might think India is a shithole?
Re: side with the authorities here (Score:1)
The recent florida 'stand your ground' killing... That does not get recorded in the statistics as a murder (by white person). It would definitely have been considered a murder if the skin color was switched. Will your "51%" statistics hold true if we cosider all such crimes?
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No different to the US. US history is littered with such incidents, especially for African Americans and Indians and NO I don't mean ancient history, a few searches will bring up many modern incidents usually the results of redneck racists and the attitudes that people from elsewhere are "outsiders".
Re: side with the authorities here (Score:4)
No different to the US. US history is littered with such incidents
Dude, this isn't US v. India. Everyone here that hasn't murdered someone because social media said so is free to judge those that do as retarded monsters. Because they are. No matter where they live.
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Casteism = Racism + Slavery
https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-most-racist-people-on-earth
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accountability is the only thing that stops some people. imagine how fucked up the US would be if we were not seriously cracking down on people that call in SWAT's. anonymity brings out some of societies true scumbags and psychopaths that have no regard for human life and think the suffering of others is a fine joke.
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It would help a lot more if the US police stops acting like the German SS during WW2.
Re: side with the authorities here (Score:1)
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Thank you. There is a lot of anger directed against the police in the US - much of it coming from their heavy handed tactics in law-enforcement. However, the key differentiator here is that their tactics aren't politically motivated. Comparing the police forces to that of more brutal regimes is not just a matter of degree (of oppression) - its also a bad comparison in terms of the rationale for the behavior.
Back on topic, I agree with the "accountability is the only thing" idea. Well....perhaps not the only
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Its an age old question, who watches the watchers? You want to give the government more power to control its population but yet you fail to see how such things are how you give nefarious actors the power to take control of the government and thus the population.
I'm not failing to see any such thing. I know what the consequences are, and I still am making the choice to say "no" to anonymity. There are solutions other than anonymity that deal with the issues of government overreach. And they are all meat space solution. I'm perfectly fine with those being options. What are the options? Here I'll be a little flippant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty , but that is the general direction in which I'm thinking.
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> accountability is the only thing that stops some people.
States the AC who claims (or other ACs claim here) that putting the accountability on murderous villagers doesn't stop them.
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It is both tech and culture. there will always be people willing to put the lives of others at risk for "fun". This is just india's version of SWATTING. as gravewax pointed out you don't need to break encryption to provide tracability, you can do that without ever breaching the encryption or security of the message itself and without the company ever needing to see or store a single piece of information from the message.
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It is both tech and culture. there will always be people willing to put the lives of others at risk for "fun". This is just india's version of SWATTING. as gravewax pointed out you don't need to break encryption to provide tracability, you can do that without ever breaching the encryption or security of the message itself and without the company ever needing to see or store a single piece of information from the message.
gravewax's solution for this problem is about as useful as Ray Ozzie's to a different one, unfortunately.
They both "solve" technical problems while leaving the much harder societal/human ones unsolved.
And if that would work, then spam would not exist today. See URL https://craphound.com/spamsolu... [craphound.com] ; A lot of us still remember...
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If you only punish the "originators", then a perfect defense is "I heard it from [insert worst enemy here]". I don't see a viable strategy for law enforcement here.
As posted elsewhere here, it seems this is mainly the Indian government trying to gloss over the problem that they do not manage to make remote areas safe and lawful, and child abductions / human trafficking is a big problem there.
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https://www.popehat.com/2012/0... [popehat.com]
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Totally.
So, what do you do about Pizzagate? Worry about how the silly rumor started? Or worry about the kind of people who believe every rumor, the stupider the better?
Tracing the rumor is useless. If people are acting like tools, then treat them like tools.
"What're you in for?"
"I'm a tool. I would attack anyone that anyone else told me to attack. I don't just think violence is the best answer, I think random, unfocused violence against any arbitrary target, whatever, is the best answe
Medium isn't the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
"When rumours and fake news get propagated by mischief mongers, the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability.
So if the government mail service was used to send letters with fake news, the mail service would be accountable for any harm the misinformation caused? If you call someone on a cell and give them incorrect rumors that cause riots, the phone company is responsible for the content of the voice conversation? If you nail a flyer with misinformation to a power pole is the electric company accountable for "hosting" the message?
The communication method used by criminals can't be held responsible for the conte
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So if the government mail service was used to send letters with fake news, the mail service would be accountable for any harm the misinformation caused?
if the mail service refused all requests to assist with tracing the mail then yeah. If you try this in the US the mail service will provide as much traceable information as they can to track you down.
If you call someone on a cell and give them incorrect rumors that cause riots, the phone company is responsible for the content of the voice conversation?
again if the phone company refuses to provide details of the caller then yeah they would be in the shit, just like they would in the US. But then in the US every call has traced anyway and the originators information would be supplied with a warrant, refusing said warrant would be a whole bucket of shit for t
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That’s a good point. It’s the free speech v. incitement to violence issue, and where the consequences are bad enough, what can be done other than try to find the perpetrators? Laws have to suit the specific society as it is. Of course, the point about free speech is that its positives outweigh the negatives, especially as it encourages growth and development. But it needs to be paced so that you don’t break the thing which you are trying to grow. There’s always a balance with develop
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The proper answer is, and always should be... (Score:2)
Not just "no". HELL NO!
Shit (Score:1)
Also, all bathrooms should have transparent walls and doors, so we can see what the hell you are doing there.
What are you hiding, citizen?
Rape?
Not Completely Encryption (Score:1)
Authorship as insurance (Score:2)
Make content publishers operating in news spaces responsible for facts they publish, but allow them to push the blame if they can come up with the author. No need to force it, let the market work it out.
Who would use it then? (Score:2)
If the service holds people accountable, then people who want to avoid that will stop using the service.
There are lots of ways to spread anonymous rumors.
Going after WhatsApp is just an updated version of "kill the messenger"
Trouble is... (Score:1)
India's Governing Party Trolls (Score:3)
India's governing party is guilty of trolling and fake news on WhatsApp [bloomberg.com] so this is all about control.