WhatsApp's privacy protections questioned after terror attack
Summary
Chat app Whatsapp which promised us that our messages wouldn't be accessed by strangers are under scrutiny again following the Westminister Terror Attack. On Sunday (26th March) the UK Home Secutary Amber Rudd said Intelligence services must be able to access all relevant information. This comment comes after it was discovered that attacker Khalid Masood appeared to have used Whatsapp minutes before his rampage. Many chat apps have begun using end to end encryption which digitally scrambles the messages passed over the network from sender to reciepent. With this in place, the technology company doesn't share the key of the sender and reciepent so the company is limited with the usefully of the information that they can remotely disclose.
Key Statistics
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http://www.businessofapps.com/whatsapp-revenue-and-usage-statistics/ |
My Opinion
What happened in Westminister is absolutely terrible. Personally, at first glance somebody may jump to an opinion of its an invasion of our privacy for the intellegiance services to access our messages sent over chat apps. However, I think that it such circumstances as the Westminister attacks there is no issue for them to access our information as it is about the safety of society in that case. Plus, as the article stipulates they would only be accessing the information they need, though this is probably something that we all find hard to believe given the vast amount of coverage discussing the government and how much they 'snoop' on our data. But, as a lot of chat app companies use end to end ecryption now it presents the question of how useful a line of information it may be.
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