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The Texas Attorney General has sued Meta over allegations that the company\u2019s WhatsApp messenger, used by more than 3 billion people, doesn\u2019t provide the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) it has long claimed.<\/p>\n
Since at least 2016, Meta (then named Facebook) has said WhatsApp provides robust end-to-end encryption, meaning that messages are encrypted on a sender\u2019s device with keys that are available only to the receiver\u2019s. By definition, E2EE means that no one else\u2014including the platform itself\u2014can read the plaintext messages.<\/p>\n
In sworn testimony before two US Senate committees in 2018, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said<\/a> Meta does \u201cnot see any of the content in WhatsApp; it is fully encrypted\u201d and that \u201cFacebook systems do not see the content of messages being transferred over WhatsApp.\u201d The engine for this E2EE is the Signal protocol, an open source code base that multiple third-party experts have said lives up to its promises.<\/p>\n In a complaint<\/a> filed Thursday, Texas AG attorneys said Meta\u2019s claims are false and that the company can and does read the unencrypted contents of WhatsApp messages. They said they are filing the action to \u201cprevent WhatsApp and Meta from continuing to willfully deceive [Texans] by misrepresenting that their private communications were just that\u2014private and inaccessible even to WhatsApp and Meta\u2014when, in fact, WhatsApp and Meta have access to all WhatsApp users\u2019 communications in their entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe gravity of Meta\u2019s and WhatsApp\u2019s violation of users\u2019 privacy and trust cannot be overstated,\u201d the attorneys wrote. \u201cAll users were entitled to believe their communications were private when WhatsApp and Meta unequivocally and repeatedly promised that no one\u2014not even WhatsApp and Meta\u2014can access their messages.\u201d<\/p>\n In an email, Meta called the allegations \u201cbaseless\u201d and vowed to fight the lawsuit in court.<\/p>\n The sole factual evidence cited for the claims is an article<\/a> published last month by Bloomberg. It reported that the US Commerce Department\u2019s Bureau of Industry and Security had abruptly closed an investigation into allegations that Meta could access encrypted WhatsApp messages shortly after one of the department\u2019s agents sent an email outlining the probe\u2019s preliminary findings.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHe said, she said<\/h2>\n