WhatsApp leader: people are being spied on in horrifying ways

“Private messages, private calls are so sensitive that they should not just live on some server. That’s just too big a risk to take with people’s privacy,” says the head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart as governments around the world are trying to restrict data encryption for the sake of law enforcement.

“Coronavirus has changed our world in a lot of ways. It forced us to have conversations digitally. In April, we saw a huge increase in our services, over 100 billion messages delivered a day, over 50 million voice and video calls,” said Mr. Cathcart during the RightsCon 2020 summit.

He worries about the growing incentive from Western governments to restrict end-to-end encryption.

WhatsApp and some other messaging services, such as Signal, use end-to-end encryption. This means that the message is scrambled from when it leaves your phone to when it gets to the recipient. No one along the way can listen to it or read it.

Encryption services are gaining popularity in places such as Hong Kong, as China imposed a new national security law in the city. Law enforcement can ask online platforms for someone’s data, but as long as it’s encrypted, there’s no way for them to read it.

Full article on https://cybernews.com/editorial/whatsapp-leader-people-are-being-spied-on-in-horrifying-ways/

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