The battle between the FBI and Apple over encrypted communications has died down a bit, but the international War on Crypto rages on. And the Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is the technology latest to run afoul of government jihads against strong online-security practices. In May, Brazilian Judge Marcel Montalvão directed telecom operators to block WhatsApp access for 72 hours in conjunction with a drug-trafficking investigation gone sour. With that one court order, 100 million Brazilians woke up to discover that they could not access one of their primary means of connecting with each other.
Unfortunately, Brazil is far from an outlier in its antagonism toward strong security for digital messaging. We cannot simply chalk these aggressive actions up to government corruption or cultural difference, writes Andrea Castillo. Intelligence agencies across the world have an incentive to undermine strong encryption techniques, even though these technologies improve online security for citizens; Brazil may simply be a harbinger of things to come. Because WhatsApp is so popular, it is a prime target for government data mining. But WhatsApp takes data security very seriously. It is not like a typical messaging platform that can easily comply with government data demands.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1Xj20BH
via IFTTT