The Facebook-owned WhatsApp texting application has expanded encryption to apply to all of the content sent between users, leading to harsh criticism from the law enforcement community.
“If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out,” James Baker, general counsel to the FBI, told a gathering on Tuesday. “It has public safety costs. Folks have to understand that, and figure out how they are going to deal with that. Do they want the public to bear those costs? Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs?”
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WhatsApp has provided some level of end-to-end encryption since 2014. However, the expansion applies to all of the functions offered by the application, like pictures, files, voice messages and group chats.
The company’s co-founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, elaborated on the decision in a blog post, writing on Tuesday, “The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to. No one can see inside that message. Not cybercriminals. Not hackers. Not oppressive regimes. Not even us. End-to-end encryption helps make communication via WhatsApp private — sort of like a face-to-face conversation.”
Koum alluded to his experience growing up under communist rule in the Soviet Union, saying that his family moved to the United States to escape oppression. The two also said that they expect the security feature to become the norm for other products in the future.
“While WhatsApp is among the few communication platforms to build full end-to-end encryption that is on by default for everything you do, we expect that it will ultimately represent the future of personal communication,” they added.
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End-to-end encryption protects files from prying eyes while they are in transit. It does not protect them from being viewed if a device containing them is accessed, or from being viewed before or after they have been sent if the device has already been compromised.
Law enforcement officials, most notably the FBI, nonetheless say the feature poses a problem because it could keep them from accessing messages between criminals or terrorists.
