Julia Angwin has an OpEd on the NY Times. She writes, in part:
One of the last bastions of privacy are encrypted messaging programs such as Signal and WhatsApp. These apps, which employ a technology called end-to-end encryption, are designed so that even the app makers themselves cannot view their users’ messages. Texting on one of these apps — particularly if you use the “disappearing messages” feature — can be almost as private and ephemeral as most real-life conversations used to be.
However, governments are increasingly demanding that tech companies surveil encrypted messages in a new and dangerous way. For years, nations sought a master key to unlock encrypted content with a search warrant, but largely gave up because they couldn’t prove they could keep such a key safe from bad actors. Now they are seeking to force companies to monitor all their content, whether or not it is encrypted.
Read the full piece at The New York Times. Julia has gifted free access to this article.