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Comment by frabbit | Hacker News Reader

Nothing to worry about according to Gizmodo:

  > The supposed “backdoor” the Guardian is describing is
  > actually a feature working as intended, and it would
  > require significant collaboration with Facebook to be 
  > able to snoop on and intercept someone’s encrypted
  > messages, something the company is extremely unlikely
  > to do.

http://gizmodo.com/theres-no-security-backdoor-in-whatsapp-d...

I, for one, certainly cannot imagine Facebook collaborating to such an extent with the government.

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There's a </sarcasm> there right?

What? You must be some sort of conspiracy theorist. Just be rational and extrapolate from your beliefs: if you admit that Facebook might do this, then why not Google, AT&T, Microsoft? There would be no end to it. Basically it would mean that all businesses are spying on you and handing the information over to the government.

I have complete faith that that is untrue based upon just the history of the last 5 years.

> AT&T

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

I thought maybe after the last decade's revelations about the security apparatus, we might be beyond calling people who are a bit paranoid about their security "conspiracy theorists".

Ah, obviously you are a Russian troll trying to hack the US telecoms industry.

Sarcasm usually plays out very poorly on written mediums like this, but you nailed it.

Yes, well done.

I feel bad now. I'm just highly frustrated that everyone is not actuated by the idea "if they _can_ spy on you, then they _will_".

Any appeal to morals/integrity/laws are essentially moot in this area. We have the ability to protect ourselves and we should be using it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...

> We have the ability to protect ourselves and we should be using it.

I don't doubt that the technology exists, I just doubt the ability of the average person to be able to protect themselves. As someone who works in a technical field with decent computer literacy, I still have a hard time approaching this problem. Perhaps I'm just not as literate as I think I am.

"They have no reason to look" is to me equivalent to "I have nothing to hide".

Both may be true, but both willfully surrender control of the situation.

Serious question: why do people believe that corporations can somehow beat government/law? The government has absolute power and will always win.

I hope you are being sarcastic.

Moxie says there's no backdoor as well:

https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoo...

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