This has nothing to do with RCS from what I read on the article. It looks like the UK wants to be able to tell companies to disable security features such as End to End Encryption so that they can view the messages.
Isn’t WhatsApp super popular in the EU as a whole? Like to the point where EVERYONE uses it? What does the UK have to say about that? It’s apparently E2EE, right?
The UK has a lot to say about that. Brexit, is still a thing. Because it is super popular in the EU & protects citizens is precisely why it is being implemented in the UK - divergence from EU law is said by some to be a ‘Brexit benefit’. We’re biting our nose, despite it resulting in the loss of FaceTime :) On the flipside, anyone remember Boris, the Brexit guy? The oh-so-predictable excuse for not handing over his Whatsapp chats to authorities over questionable Covid PPE contracts - is that he forgot the passcode; so there is that. Overall, strong E2E encryption makes collective sense, even if it also protects questionable incidents - which more often than not, are a failure of non-technical checks & balances, which have nothing to do with encryption.
But although it’s popular it’s nowhere near everyone using it… I have about 2 whatsapp contacts and one of those is a mailing list. Most people I know use FB messenger. A few signal… It really depends on who your friend groups are…
Not necessarily. Google has implemented E2EE in their implementation, but it only works if both parties are using Google Messages. It’s not a standard part of the spec.
I too could manually encrypt data and send it via regular old sms. That would require the other party to know of and make use of extra tools to be able to read and reply. If not, then they might not be able to read the message, or worse, reply in plaintext. That’s what google is doing with rcs. Rcs is not encrypted. the google app encrypts the data and sends it “unencrypted” over rcs. From rcs’ point of view it looks like “this user is trying to send random junk… who am I to judge?”
I’ll be damned if we’ll have to thank the UK for getting RCS normalized.
This has nothing to do with RCS from what I read on the article. It looks like the UK wants to be able to tell companies to disable security features such as End to End Encryption so that they can view the messages.
Isn’t WhatsApp super popular in the EU as a whole? Like to the point where EVERYONE uses it? What does the UK have to say about that? It’s apparently E2EE, right?
Curious why WhatsApp isn’t in trouble.
The UK has a lot to say about that. Brexit, is still a thing. Because it is super popular in the EU & protects citizens is precisely why it is being implemented in the UK - divergence from EU law is said by some to be a ‘Brexit benefit’. We’re biting our nose, despite it resulting in the loss of FaceTime :) On the flipside, anyone remember Boris, the Brexit guy? The oh-so-predictable excuse for not handing over his Whatsapp chats to authorities over questionable Covid PPE contracts - is that he forgot the passcode; so there is that. Overall, strong E2E encryption makes collective sense, even if it also protects questionable incidents - which more often than not, are a failure of non-technical checks & balances, which have nothing to do with encryption.
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Whatsapp is under the same rules and has said they’d leave too… https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/08/whatsapp-could-disappear-uk-over-privacy-concerns-ministers-told
But although it’s popular it’s nowhere near everyone using it… I have about 2 whatsapp contacts and one of those is a mailing list. Most people I know use FB messenger. A few signal… It really depends on who your friend groups are…
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That would be better than iMessage or Whatsapp, but even better if we all moved to Simplex, or other secure and private messaging app.
rcs is not e2e encrypted afaik
Not necessarily. Google has implemented E2EE in their implementation, but it only works if both parties are using Google Messages. It’s not a standard part of the spec.
I too could manually encrypt data and send it via regular old sms. That would require the other party to know of and make use of extra tools to be able to read and reply. If not, then they might not be able to read the message, or worse, reply in plaintext. That’s what google is doing with rcs. Rcs is not encrypted. the google app encrypts the data and sends it “unencrypted” over rcs. From rcs’ point of view it looks like “this user is trying to send random junk… who am I to judge?”
The Google implementation of rcs is E2EE.