U.S. Government Seeks Facebook Help to Wiretap Messenger

Reuters (August 17, 2018) reported that the U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc (FB.O) to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe.

The previously unreported case in a federal court in California is proceeding under seal, so no filings are publicly available, but the three people told Reuters that Facebook is contesting the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand.

The judge in the Messenger case heard arguments on Tuesday on a government motion to hold Facebook in contempt of court for refusing to carry out the surveillance request, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

If the government prevails in the Facebook Messenger case, it could make similar arguments to force companies to rewrite other popular encrypted services such as Signal and Facebook’s billion-user WhatsApp, which include both voice and text functions, some legal experts said.

Facebook is arguing in court that Messenger voice calls are encrypted end-to-end, meaning that only the two parties have access to the conversation.

Ordinary Facebook text messages, Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Gmail, and other services are decrypted by the service providers during transit for targeted advertising or other reasons, making them available for court-ordered interception.

End-to-end encrypted communications, by contrast, go directly from one user to another user without revealing anything intelligible to providers.

Facebook says it can only comply with the government’s request if it rewrites the code relied upon by all its users to remove encryption or else hacks the government’s current target, according to the sources.
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Facebook Messenger 'Secret Conversations' are end-to-end encrypted, but a standard message sent via Messenger is not. If you use Facebook Messenger for private communication, always use Secret Conversations, or consider using WhatsApp for encrypted communication. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. If you want to move away from Facebook for your private conversations, I recommend that you use Signal Private Messenger.