Published in · 4 min read · May 25, 2023
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The right to privacy is a cornerstone of any democracy worth the name. Intercepting telephone conversations requires a court order, and involves the use of relatively sophisticated technology.
End-to-end encryption, or E2EE, is a system whereby only direct recipients can read messages. I emphasize the word only because the technology means messages are decrypted upon receipt, i.e. by accessing the receiver’s device. The idea is to prevent anybody intercepting messages, including telecommunications and internet providers, and even or the authorities from gaining access to the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation. These systems are designed to defeat any attempt at surveillance or tampering, because no third party can decrypt the data being communicated or stored. Furthermore, and this has been well known for a long time now thanks to a number of high-profile cases, companies that use end-to-end encryption cannot hand over their customers’ text messages to the authorities.
In 2015, a judge in Brazil demanded access to encrypted messages on WhatsApp. When the company refused to do this, other judges sought and imposed bans on the company’s service, even though it is technically impossible of the company to comply with the requirement to decrypt communications between…
