Lord Bracknell
On fire
Auto Correct is, in fact, just another form of encryption. It simply makes messages unintelligible.
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What's App and others, encryption
- Thread starter Leekbrookgull
- Start date
Auto Correct is, in fact, just another form of encryption. It simply makes messages unintelligible.
No objection from me either. Encryption is important so that criminals can not pick up information about you that you don't want to share, so it is there for a reason.
This is a difficult piece to get your head around but it is a bit like the security services asking for a key to the front door of everyone's house.
The bad guys will install a second door with a different lock. The good guys will assume everything is okay right up to the point when the key is copied or lost.
Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk
For me, this is the real core of it. While not having an overbearing government is obviously very important, any policy that allows authorized forces to break encryption will, eventually, allow those without that authorization a way in.
studio150
Well-known member
While I use the app much like you I am worried about encryption being opened up for security services. This is on the basis that as soon as yoy put a backdoor into any program it immediately opwns it up to hackers. I don't want my credit card bank details etc made effectively freely available to hackers.
What benefit would it achieve anyway as I assume that terrorists would drop communicating via whats app and use another form which the security services would need to catch up with.
You never know but maybe the infinite jukebox thread is all in code
GingerBeerMan
3-0
- Dec 29, 2011
- 8,204
Wasn't the Snooper's charter already being implemented, but it wasn't legal? The passing of the Snoopers Charter was just to make what they were already doing legal. This may be the same sort of scenario (FWIW I don't think these encrypted messages can be decrypted at present).
The thing in this case is that the reports are the lone-wolf attacker may have been using WhatsApp before the attack on Wednesday. They don't even say he was using it, let alone whether he said anything to do with the attacks. This is just the security services taking advantage of a nut job to latch onto the general publics fear and erode our rights to privacy even further.
AmexRuislip
Retired Spy 🕵️♂️
Perhaps I was being a tad flippant in my post on WhatsUp, not naive as quoted previous.
You can have all the security possible to protect yourself, but at the end of the day, there's always back doors, as you have said, and if the security services want to go places, I'm damn sure they will covertly or not.
As the US say, it's all about national security, which all the Western allies follow with aplomb.
Infinite Jukebox aside, auto correct does what is bloody pleases when inputting in obscure band / song names
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Two Professors
Two Mad Professors
If you have nothing to hide,then why would anybody be bothered by security reading their messages.They're trying to stop terrorists,not find out if you're a massive pervert!
Wrong-Direction
Well-known member
- Mar 10, 2013
- 13,634
The BBC report he was last seen online on WhatsApp at 14:37, with the attack commencing at 14:40. They don't know what he said, because of the encryption, hence this thread being started.
Of course an extreme example, but the point seems to be: what if he sent a message to a fellow conspirator at 14:37 saying something to the effect of, 'about to do my thing, good luck with yours next Tuesday, see you in the afterlife'.
However, surely they can just access his phone, given it was clearly in the car with him at the time.
It depends. If the phone's locked then that's a whole different kettle of encrypted fish, as shown by the FBI case last year where tried to get Apple to unlock a phone.
Ah, good point.
So to my above point, it is a reasonable assumption that it is of critical importance that the security services find out who he was contacting 3 minutes prior to his attack. Their fear being that it may be another radical plotting a similar, potentially imminent, attack. With all the debate following Masood's attack concerning whether it could have been prevented, the security services are clearly between a rock and a hard place here. Their path to obtaining information which could be of importance for national security, being prevented due to attempts to protect free speech and privacy of information.
BensGrandad
New member
If they so desired could the powers that be just block whats app from working in this country if it cant be de crypted
father_and_son
Well-known member
In the scenario above then surely the requirement is for a law allowing the Government to force Google & Apple to add a "law enforcement code" to open every phone.
Why would this have ANYTHING to do with Whatsapp or indeed any other service provider that may use encryption to protect their customers' privacy? The reason is that GCHQ want to collect EVERY message sent via Whatsapp (and all social media/messaging/text or voice communications) so that they can run them all through algorithms to "predict when terrorist incidents will occur". But the cost of that is that every future government will have access to that data regardless of whether or not we trust them to use it just to predict terrorist incidents (or indeed their definition of a terrorist - especially as one man's terrorist is just another man's freedom fighter).
For this specific situation, yes I agree. However this creates a situation where the security services can only ever be reactive rather than proactive, at least where communication is concerned - normally by the time you have the terrorist's phone, it's too late for a number of innocent people and their families.
father_and_son
Well-known member
But this is exactly my point.... The price we pay for allowing the government to access *everything* has the potential to be much, much higher than that number. (See previous posts for an idea of how many lives have been lost when we have allowed government unfettered control before)
Kaiser_Soze
Who is Kaiser Soze??
- Apr 14, 2008
- 1,355
By that extension, would you have any issue with the Government tapping your phones or opening all of your mail before you receive it, without your knowledge? Anyone that says they have absolutely NO issue with either of those scenarios, I would suggest, is not being entirely truthful to themselves.
I mean legally they can of course. Technically they can probably cut it off for 95% of people relatively easy. People who are technically proficient will almost always find ways around pretty much any block.
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
I assumed it was an auto-correct but couldn't work out what it was.
That's some auto-correct you have on your phone, too!