FaceTime and “possibly” WhatsApp are the only applications that prevent governments from accessing the contents of communication, a cybersecurity expert said on Monday.
“Both offer end-to-end secure communications by default. FaceTime voice/video calls definitely aren’t backed up by default,” said Jonathan Mayer, a scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at the Stanford Law School. In comments to the Washington Examiner, he also said that WhatsApp text messages on Android are believed by many to be secure.
FaceTime, a service available on Apple devices, allows users to see and speak to each other. WhatsApp is a messaging application available across platforms.
Mayer appeared on a panel about encryption held at Georgetown University on Monday. The method of encoding is capable of preventing government and even companies that facilitate communication from accessing information transmitted between consumers. Government officials complain that it hinders their ability to spy on criminals, and argue that the companies should install “backdoors” that allow for access when the government can provide a warrant. Privacy advocates say it protects consumers in the U.S. and especially those in undemocratic countries.
“This isn’t an ideology thing. This is not poking the federal government with a stick,” Mayer said, in spite of the fact that “some people in the Bay area … hold some unusual views about the federal government.”
“My experience is that software engineers — espedcially security engineers — take human rights very seriously,” he added.
Speaking on the panel, Robert Litt, a senior counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, asked, “Is it a good idea to give government authorities, when they have appropriate legal authority, the ability to access and decrypt communications?”
“Everybody in this room knows that individual privacy has never been an absolute right,” Litt continued. “It’s always been qualified by the existence of a number of lawful authorities. Are we comfortable moving towards a regime where communication and stored data is inaccessible to legal authorities even when they have legal authority?”
Some in Congress would like to pass legislation prohibiting companies from implementing such measures, but in the wake of pressure from both sides, the Obama administration has been slow to take a position. “The encryption issue … both in this country and abroad is going to have a major impact on how law enforcement and intelligence do their jobs,” a source identified as a senior administration official told the Washington Post last week.
“It’s not surprising that they want to make sure that the public discourse includes a healthy debate about their issues as well,” the source added.
