WhatsApp and Signal fight back against the latest government plan to make encryption do the impossible

The latest country to try bashing its head against the wall of reality is <spins wheel> the U.K., where WhatsApp, Signal, and a host of other messaging platforms are calling for the government to reconsider parts of the Online Safety Bill which would force chat services to use “accredited technology” that scans for terrorist and child-abuse material—and, somewhat incredibly, videos of migrants crossing the English Channel from mainland Europe.

“The law could give an unelected official the power to weaken the privacy of billions of people around the world,” the companies’ leaders wrote in an open letter. “We don’t think any company, government, or person should have the power to read your personal messages, and we’ll continue to defend encryption technology. We’re proud to stand with other technology companies in our industry pushing back against the misguided parts of this law that would make people in the U.K. and around the world less safe.”

A government spokesperson told the BBC: “We support strong encryption, but this cannot come at the cost of public safety”—before adding that the bill “in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption.” Good luck squaring that circle.

According to the bill’s critics—which include a who’s who of human rights groups and security experts—the only way for companies to comply with the new rules without outright breaking their end-to-end encryption (E2EE) would be to scan the contents of messages on the device before they’re encrypted and/or after they’re decrypted. This client-side scanning may leave messages protected when in transit, but it otherwise defeats the purpose of E2EE: Making sure private means private.

Signal (these days led by ex-Googler Meredith Whittaker) has already threatened to leave the U.K. if the bill becomes law as it stands. Meta’s WhatsApp has also promised not to implement the controversial measures, which would probably also mean a British exit. The bill is currently being considered by the British Parliament’s upper house, the House of Lords, having already been passed by the lower House of Commons.

But it’s not just the U.K. Across the Channel, activists are also fighting a very similar European Commission proposal that top cryptography professor Matthew Green last year described as “the most terrifying thing” he’d ever seen. Several days ago, the European Parliament produced a damning impact assessment on that proposal, warning of “vulnerabilities for users of E2EE communication channels,” and infringements on users’ fundamental rights in ways that “cannot be justified.” 

Also, the assessment noted, it’s one thing to scan for images you already know of, but the only way to scan for new child-abuse material is by using A.I.—at which point the accuracy plummets and you need a crazy amount of resources to sort through the millions of false positives.

The quest to create a government back door to encrypted data isn’t solely a European preoccupation. The first incarnation of the debate took place in the 1990s when the Clinton administration launched its ill-fated Clipper chip program. And when Apple recently introduced fully encrypted iCloud backups—while also abandoning its much-criticized attempt to introduce client-side scanning to Messages—the FBI grumbled that the move “hinders our ability to protect the American people” and argued that it and other agencies needed “lawful access by design.”

But right now, Europe is the main battleground for this endlessly recurring privacy showdown. As always, the world is watching to see who wins.

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David Meyer

Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman. 

NEWSWORTHY

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Bluesky’s wider release. ​​Back when he was still the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey helped fund Bluesky—a public benefit company building an open-source, decentralized social protocol that Dorsey hoped Twitter would eventually operate on. Bluesky is still in its early days and available by invite only, but CEO Jay Graber gave an update on the project to The Verge on Monday. With 20,000 users, Bluesky is now letting in more people from the 1.2 million wait list. Graber says that Bluesky is different from competitors like Mastodon since it has account portability, global discoverability, and customizable moderation.

Layoffs at Amazon rival. E-commerce firm Noon has let go of about 10% of its 3,400 employees as part of a cost-cutting effort over the past year and a half. The layoffs at the Dubai-based company have affected marketing and advertising roles and other departments, founder Mohamed Alabbar told Bloomberg. Noon was created in 2016 with $1 billion from backers and operates in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. It has considered expanding to other nations in the Middle East. 

ON OUR FEED

“I applied as a cheeky monkey, to find out if the competitions are prepared for A.I. images to enter. They are not.” 

—German artist Boris Eldagsen, rejecting his win in the Creative category for this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. The judges knew that Eldagsen had used A.I. for the black-and-white image of two women, but they said he misled them into thinking it was a “co-creation” with A.I.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai says that A.I. could be ‘more profound’ than both fire and electricity—but he’s been saying the same thing for years, by Prarthana Prakash

Bob Iger names Steve Jobs as chief inspiration behind dramatic return as Disney CEO amid persistent rumors of a sale to Apple, by Christiaan Hetzner

Tim Cook puts the personal touch on India’s first Apple store as iPhone maker bids to expand Asian presence outside China, by Nicholas Gordon

Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings’s postretirement project: Powder Mountain, the stalled Utah ski resort once hyped as a utopia for founders and billionaires, by Lila MacLellan

BEFORE YOU GO

Samsung News comes to Galaxy devices. Samsung has launched a news app with morning and evening briefings and custom feeds. The rebrand of its Samsung Free app makes it more like Apple News since it’s now dedicated to news and podcasts rather than the live TV and games it previously offered.

The news app will be rolled out to Galaxy users in the U.S. today, and other users will be able to access the app by downloading it from the Samsung Galaxy Store. Samsung says the feature will be available on select phones to start and roll out to other devices in the coming weeks. News content will initially be available from multiple partners with additional sources added to the app over time through Upday, its syndication partner.