The Indian Supreme Court has issued a notice to WhatsApp, the IT Ministry and the Finance Ministry, demanding an explanation as to why a grievance officer hasn’t yet been appointed in the country. The Facebook-owned company has been under immense scrutiny due to the spread of fake messages on its platform that led to numerous instances of violence across the country. The government had previously demanded WhatsApp to provide a way to track the origins of such malicious messages, which the company denied on concerns of this being a breach of its end-to-end encryption policy for user privacy. In an ironic turn of event, WhatsApp came forward to confess that its Google Drive backups are not end-to-end encrypted after all.
SC’s Notice to WhatsApp on Appointment of Grievance Officer
The Supreme Court has appointed a duration of four weeks demanding WhatsApp, the IT Ministry and the Supreme Ministry to come forward with a detailed explanation to why a grievance officer hasn’t been appointed in India, ANI reported. This notice comes in the wake of around 30 incidents of mob lynching in the country as a result of the spread of false messages via the popular messaging platform.
Supreme Court today issued a notice to #WhatsApp, IT and Finance ministry and sought a detailed reply from them within four weeks as to why a grievance officer in India has not been appointed yet by Whatsapp pic.twitter.com/iqxaiIi5AP
— ANI (@ANI) August 27, 2018
WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels recently met with the Union Minister for Law and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad in Delhi to discuss the Indian Government’s concerns regarding the matter. Prasad had later disclosed that the government had asked WhatsApp to set up a local corporate entity in India and assign a grievance officer. Furthermore, the government asked Daniels for a technological solution to track the spread of fake news on the app.
Despite the urgency of these matter at hand, WhatsApp issued a statement on August 25 where it rejected India’s demand for such a solution. The reason for such a decision was because the company feels building traceability would breach of user’s privacy and would undermine its end-to-end encryption policy. Furthermore, WhatsApp takes every opportunity to stress on the fact that it has no access to user messages regardless thanks to this end-to-end encryption mechanism.
WhatsApp Considers Hyderabad to Set Up Office In Case It Decides to be Present in India
No Encryption on WhatsApp Google Drive Backups
We had recently reported how WhatsApp backups on Google Drive no longer affect allotted storage space. Starting November 12, 2018, available quota on Google Drive will no longer be affected by the size of a WhatsApp backup no matter how large the size is. This includes both messages and media files.
However, WhatsApp has added a disclaimer on its site which says, “Media and messages you back up aren’t protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive.” This means that in the unlikely event where a user’s Drive gets exposed to a malicious entity, there is a chance it would be able to access the backup and expose backed-up messages and media files.
This raises new concerns regarding the legitimacy of WhatsApp’s encryption. If a simple backup to Google Drive cannot maintain the company’s acclaimed encryption parameters, then surely it has the means of accessing user data if it wanted to. As such, WhatsApp’s claims of its inability to access user data for the government because of its secure encryption is invalidated.
With that said, this doesn’t mean users’ backups are completely exposed. The only way someone would get access to this data is if they were able to get their hands on a user’s Google Drive account. With a strong enough password, and just being careful in general would ensure a user would be able to keep their account safe. In case a third-party is able to get access to a user’s Drive account, Google doesn’t readily provide the option to open – or even download – a WhatsApp backup file.
Nevertheless, this matter coming to light can help the Indian government enforce its orders and potentially get WhatsApp to comply with its demands.
The post WhatsApp Messages on Google Drive Less Secure; Supreme Court Strikes WhatsApp for Not Appointing Grievance Officer appeared first on MySmartPrice.
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