[liberationtech] Whatsapp, a Trojan horse for seekers of easy privacy?

[Cypher]

On 01/15/2015 11:29 AM, carlo von lynX wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 08:49:31AM -0800, Steve Weis wrote:
>> Note you said "users will never know" if e2e is being used, but
>> as Moxie says "we'll be surfacing this into the UI" of upgraded
>> clients.
> 
> There is a systemic legal problem by which neither Facebook, nor 
> Whatsapp, nor Textsecure nor Moxie are in a position to guarantee 
> that whatever is surfaced into the UI actually means what it says.

I was under the impression that the government couldn't make you
actively lie to someone. For example, if I have a message on my page
that says "we do not collect any user data" and the government makes
me collect data on an existing user, that's acceptable. But they could
not stop me from changing that sign and force me to lie. I'd assume
that would be the case with WhatsApp. Once the visuals are surfaced,
each new encrypted connection would be forcing the service to actively
tell a lie, which, as I understand it, isn't legal. Of course, IINAL
so I don't know.