Police have used the “very legitimate grievance” the general public has with giant tech firms like Meta about information assortment and surveillance as a pretext to undermine person privateness, the president of encrypted messaging app Signal has mentioned.
Meredith Whittaker informed Guardian Australia that it had turn into “an easy win with few political consequences” for politicians to beat up on Facebook up to now decade, and whereas there was professional public backlash in opposition to the “mass surveillance tech business model” the coverage response had a “very unfortunate shape”.
“Instead of aiming for the root of these harms, the concentrated power at the heart of the platform monopoly, the mass surveillance that is the engine of this business model, collecting huge amounts of data on people, using that to target ads, to train AI models, to manipulate and influence people into spending more and more time on the platform and service of clicking ads … we see efforts almost to extend this surveillance and this monitoring and give governments a piece of it,” she mentioned.
“It’s almost as if a very legitimate grievance has been turned into a pretext for doing what law enforcement has wanted all along while ignoring the core of the problem and, in some ways, even exacerbating it.”
Signal has been considered essentially the most well-known devoted encrypted messaging service since its launch in 2018. Whittaker has been president since 2022, at a time when international locations akin to Australia, the UK and the US have been all pushing again in opposition to tech firms encrypting the non-public communications of their customers. The encrypted communications make it not solely inconceivable for the businesses themselves to see what’s being mentioned, but in addition regulation enforcement.
Meta, particularly, has been the goal of robust criticism from lawmakers for making its messaging companies end-to-end encrypted final 12 months. In Australia, regardless of there being barely used encryption-busting legal guidelines for regulation enforcement since 2018, regulation enforcement are asking tech firms to do extra. Proposed on-line security requirements might power firms to do what’s “technically feasible” to detect little one abuse materials being shared on encrypted messaging companies.
Whittaker rejected the concept it was a debate being had between lawmakers and the tech firms. It’s existential for Signal, she mentioned.
“We have been consistently trying to clarify the technical reality and the stakes of the proposals that are being put forward, which are [a] ‘put lipstick on a mass surveillance proposal and say that it isn’t actually undermining privacy’,” she mentioned.
“That doesn’t work for us. We need to live in the realm of technical reality.”
She mentioned there was no solution to implement what was being requested in a means that will protect person privateness.
“What we’re talking about is a kind of self-negating paradox. You cannot do mass surveillance privately, full stop.”
Whittaker spoke to Guardian Australia earlier than a Wheeler Centre discuss in Melbourne subsequent week, and was assembly with the workplace of the Australian eSafety commissioner this week to place Signal’s place on the proposals to the regulator.
Whittaker mentioned Signal was providing its technical experience to “cut through the mud” of the controversy, noting that there had been numerous lobbying on the difficulty from different organisations.
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“There are a lot of self-interested tech organisations that are selling what amounts to snake oil … [They] tend to assert that, because mass surveillance systems are implemented before encryption takes place, they don’t undermine encryption.
“This is word games, this is not actually a technical assessment.”
Signal wouldn’t adjust to mass surveillance mandates in international locations the place it turns into regulation, she confirmed, and whereas the corporate would struggle the legal guidelines, it might “cease operations” with out a second thought if there was no different alternative.
“We would not do that lightly, and we will fight until the end to ensure that as many people across the globe have access to meaningful privacy,” Whittaker mentioned.
At the identical time as regulators in western international locations are pushing for extra invasive surveillance powers for encrypted communications, there’s a separate push to ban TikTok from international locations together with Australia over issues concerning the firm being compelled to adjust to China’s nationwide safety legal guidelines and hand over person information.
Whittaker mentioned she had watched that debate with dismay.
“The issue isn’t simply that ‘mass surveillance is bad’ when a state we’re in competition with does it,” she mentioned.
“Simply scapegoating one platform who is doing ultimately what all the other platforms do just in another relationship to another government is not solving this problem.”
