US authorities reportedly investigate claims that Meta can read encrypted WhatsApp messages
US authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, can read users' encrypted chats on the messaging platform. This comes after a lawsuit was filed, alleging that Meta "can access virtually all of WhatsApp users' purportedly 'private' communications."
Meta has denied these allegations, calling the lawsuit's claim "categorically false and absurd." They suggested that the claim is a tactic to support the NSO Group, an Israeli firm that develops spyware, and which recently lost a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp.
The firm behind the lawsuit, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, attributes the allegation to unnamed 'courageous' whistleblowers from various countries. Interestingly, Quinn Emanuel is also representing the NSO Group in an appeal against a judgment from a US federal court, which ordered them to pay $167 million to WhatsApp for violating its terms of service.
A Meta spokesperson, Carl Woog, criticized Quinn Emanuel for filing a meritless lawsuit, stating that the firm is also trying to help NSO overturn an injunction that barred their operations. Adam Wolfson, a partner at Quinn Emanuel, defended their actions, emphasizing that their defense of NSO is unrelated to the lawsuit for WhatsApp users.
Steven Murdoch, a professor of security engineering, found the lawsuit "a bit strange" due to the lack of information about the whistleblowers. He suggested that if WhatsApp were indeed reading messages, it would likely have been discovered and would end the business. Murdoch believes that secrets within a company are hard to keep, and such a scandal would likely have leaked.
The US Department of Commerce has also investigated the claims, but a spokesperson called them 'unsubstantiated.' WhatsApp promotes itself as an end-to-end encrypted platform, ensuring that messages can only be read by the sender and recipient, not by the server.
However, a senior executive in the technology sector questioned WhatsApp's privacy claims, noting that the platform collects metadata on users, including profile information and contact lists. Despite this, the executive stated that the idea of WhatsApp selectively accessing the content of end-to-end encrypted chats is mathematically impossible.
