Snowden on CryptoPrivacy re US-UK-AUS Facebook Crypto Slapdown

[grarpamp]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/15/encryption-lose-privacy-us-uk-australia-facebook
https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/10/15/1359231/edward-snowden-without-encryption-we-will-lose-all-privacy-this-is-our-new-battleground
https://i.redd.it/855lzz700fs31.png

In the midst of the greatest computer security crisis in history, the
US government, along with the governments of the UK and Australia, is
attempting to undermine the only method that currently exists for
reliably protecting the world's information: encryption. Should they
succeed in their quest to undermine encryption, our public
infrastructure and private lives will be rendered permanently unsafe.
[...] Earlier this month the US, alongside the UK and Australia,
called on Facebook to create a "backdoor," or fatal flaw, into its
encrypted messaging apps, which would allow anyone with the key to
that backdoor unlimited access to private communications. So far,
Facebook has resisted this.

Donald Trump's attorney general, William Barr, who authorised one of
the earliest mass surveillance programmes without reviewing whether it
was legal, is now signalling an intention to halt -- or even roll back
-- the progress of the last six years. WhatsApp, the messaging service
owned by Facebook, already uses end-to-end encryption (E2EE): in March
the company announced its intention to incorporate E2EE into its other
messaging apps -- Facebook Messenger and Instagram -- as well. Now
Barr is launching a public campaign to prevent Facebook from climbing
this next rung on the ladder of digital security. This began with an
open letter co-signed by Barr, UK home secretary Priti Patel,
Australia's minister for home affairs and the US secretary of homeland
security, demanding Facebook abandon its encryption proposals.

If Barr's campaign is successful, the communications of billions will
remain frozen in a state of permanent insecurity: users will be
vulnerable by design. And those communications will be vulnerable not
only to investigators in the US, UK and Australia, but also to the
intelligence agencies of China, Russia and Saudi Arabia -- not to
mention hackers around the world. End-to-end encrypted communication
systems are designed so that messages can be read only by the sender
and their intended recipients, even if the encrypted -- meaning locked
-- messages themselves are stored by an untrusted third party, for
example, a social media company such as Facebook.