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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The Guardian was wrong to report in January that the popular messaging service WhatsApp had a security flaw so serious that it was a huge threat to freedom of speech.
But it was right to bring to wide public notice an aspect of WhatsApp that had the potential to make some messages vulnerable to being read by an unintended recipient.
The Guardian did not test with an appropriate range of experts a claim that had implications for the more than one billion people who use the Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
In a detailed review I found that misinterpretations, mistakes and misunderstandings happened at several stages of the reporting and editing process. Cumulatively they produced an article that overstated its case.
The Guardian ought to have responded more effectively to the strong criticism the article generated from well-credentialled experts in the arcane field of developing and adapting end-to-end encryption for a large-scale messaging service.
The original article – now amended and associated with the conclusions of this review – led to follow-up coverage, some of which sustained the wrong impression given at the outset. The most serious inaccuracy was a claim that WhatsApp had a "backdoor", an intentional, secret way for third parties to read supposedly private messages. This claim was withdrawn within eight hours of initial publication online, but withdrawn incompletely. The story retained material predicated on the existence of a backdoor, including strongly expressed concerns about threats to freedom, betrayal of trust and benefits for governments which surveil. In effect, having dialled back the cause for alarm, the Guardian failed to dial back expressions of alarm.
This made a relatively small, expert, vocal and persistent audience very angry. Guardian editors did not react to an open letter co-signed by 72 experts in a way commensurate with the combined stature of the critics and the huge number of people potentially affected by the story. The essence of the open letter and a hyperlink to it were added to the article, but wider consultation and a fundamental reconsideration of the story were needed.
-- submitted from IRC
Previously: WhatsApp Vulnerability Allows Snooping on Encrypted Messages -- Or Does it?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:05PM
the problem is still what is maybe called a "unique identifier"?
for mobile phone networks, it's you phone number.
for your snail mail, it's your address.
for your person as a person in america it is your social security number.
for your website or (such service) it is the domain name.
whoever controls the assignment and storage of these "unique identifier" controls you (and your communications).
without a unique identifier, it is not possible to ..uhm ... uniquely identify a counterpart and thus even though 96% of all computing devices are connected to some form of network cannot be FOUND and thus no communication can be initialized.
many communication app...programs just pickyback on a mobile phone number, which piggybacks on a SIM card and thus on money.
thus having a "unique identifier" requires a constant input of money.
today, having the means to communicate (having a internet connection) doesn't give you a unique identifier for free.
personally, i think the only tech IPO that merits a billion dollar reward TODAY, should be a company that figures out some code/software
that allows safe, secure, scalable and decentralized management of these "unique identifiers" for communication devices, like smart phones and computers...