Today is Global Encryption Day and here at Tryst.link, we love encryption. Without encryption most of the things we take for granted on the internet would be impossible to keep private. Addresses you look up on Apple Maps, everything you buy from Amazon and anything you search on Google would all be exposed to anyone who happens to be watching. With encryption, even if a system is compromised the contents of that system are kept a secret.
But not your DMs.
That's right, direct messages, often personal in nature with contents you'd be horrified about if they were made public, are not encrypted when they're sent from you to your friend and often are not encrypted when they sit in a database so you can read them later. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Slack and Discord - super popular platforms where people send messages to each other they expect to be private - either don’t have end-to-end encryption at all or don’t have it enabled by default!
End-to-end encryption is the gold standard for keeping stuff secure on the internet. It means the message you sent is encrypted, all the time, not only when in transit between you and your pals. The only person with the key to read your messages is you and the people you've shared those messages with. Zuckerberg can't read it. The police can't read it. Not even the government can read it. This is the strength of end-to-end encryption.
As you might expect, the government and police really hate that they can't read your messages. They're so used to being able to spy on messages whenever they like that they complain loudly every time a big company considers adding end-to-end encryption to their messaging platform:
- Former UK Home Secretary Priti Patel called Meta's plan to enable end-to-end encryption a "grotesque betrayal".
- The Australian Department of Home Affairs said they are "deeply concerned" about "anonymising technology like end-to-end encryption" because "it is not striking the right balance between the benefits and the risks of harm".
- The boss of UK spy agency MI5 literally went on TV and asked tech companies to give them access to end-to-end encrypted messages "on an exceptional basis" to "stop the most serious forms of harm happening".
- The FBI even has a website complaining about how end-to-end encryption is making their life difficult and that they deserve "Lawful Access" to everyone's device.
Law enforcement agencies and politicians are desperate for their grubby little hands to dig around our private communications. They say it's so they can catch terrorists, that they need access to protect children from predators and to trust them that it's only so they can listen in on the bad guys and keep you safe. Even if that was true (it isn't, but that's a story for another time), once there's an exception made in the secure end-to-end encryption chain for the cops, there's also a way in for anyone else that wants a peek.
While this debate rages on, the tension between big tech companies and the government over end-to-end encryption leaves our private messages exposed unless you're using dedicated secure messaging apps like Signal or WhatsApp.
Our friends at Fight for the Future are using Global Encryption Day to raise awareness about the lack of end-to-end encryption on the most popular messaging platforms. They have a petition you can sign and information on what you can do to keep your DMs private.
