The American Civil Liberties Union wants to know how and why , exactly , a joint federal - nation task force tracking the MS-13 gang tried to arrange societal giant Facebook to build a backdoor into its Messenger app for surveillance purpose , TechCrunch reportedon Wednesday .
to begin with this year , news bust that the Department of Justice undertake toforce Facebookto on the Q.T. recode part of its Messenger app to give them the capableness to take heed in on Voice over Internet Protocol ( VoIP ) birdsong , even seek a contempt of court purchase order against the fellowship when it refused to do so . Facebook enunciate submission was impossible due to end - to - end encryption , and a U.S. District Court evaluator in California ruled against the DOJ . Yet the effectual logical thinking behind both the DOJ ’s attempt to secure a contempt of court order and its rejection have not been publicly released .
The ACLU wants to know more and hasfiled a motionto unseal record touch on to the case including sealed docket sheets , lawcourt purchase order on sealing requests , juridical ruling involved with those requests , and “ any sound depth psychology presented in government submissions incorporated , adopted , or rejected implicitly or explicitly in such judicial rulings . ”
TechCrunch write :
Jennifer Granick , the ACLU ’s surveillance and cybersecurity pleader , said the public “ deserves to know why the government thought it could rase quantity that protect their right wing to privacy online . ”
“ The outcome of this legal dispute between Facebook and the Justice Department has the potential to feign the secret communication theory of million of Americans who use communication services such as Messenger , WhatsApp , Skype , and Microsoft Outlook , ” she said .
It ’s not totally clear whether Facebook uses true end - to - oddment encoding in the calls;prior investigations from 2015 showedthat Messenger academic term keys were shared in transit with the company using a standard protocol called SDES , making the keys potentially potential to stop in transit . However , it ’s also possible that Facebook has additional stratum of security preventing that , or that it has shifted to a more safe carrying out since . Beyond whether it is reasonable or technically feasible for the DOJ to necessitate Facebook compromise the security of one of its essence products , the company has also argued that it isimmune to lawsrequiring telecoms to allow investigators with a warrant access to VoIP lines since it is not closely integrated with regular earpiece internet .
Facebook ’s victory here is significant — authorities seeking this expansion of power chose a commodious scoundrel , a street gang Donald Trump hasdenounced as “ animals”undeserving of the full protections of the jurisprudence . That ’s not unlike to a anterior battle between the FBI and Apple over encryption on an iPhone belonging to one of two terrorists involve in the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting , which also end in a frustration for bureau . ( The FBI was afterwards capable to get accession to the phoneby paying $ 900,000to a private company that bypass its protection . )
The ACLUwrote in a statementthat a opinion in the DOJ ’s favour could have potentially weakened security measures in place to protect Facebook ’s billion - plus other user against hackers , as well as launch the door to interchangeable demands on other religious service . But as TechCrunch remark , without public entree to the ruling against the DOJ , other technical school companies that will be inevitably ask to ramp up backdoor surveillance tools into their products by authorities in the future may not be able to mention Facebook ’s case law .
[ TechCrunch ]
CybersecurityEncryptionFacebookSurveillanceTechnology
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