This article furthers a conversation that is larger than Facebook, or WhatsApp, or encryption. The conversation that needs to be had is around privacy and ethics.
With cell phones, Alexa, Facebook, CCTV cameras, red-light cameras, building surveillance, Google Apps, etc, is there any expectation of privacy? Many or most of us choose (knowingly or otherwise) to forfeit our own privacy for convenience. Want to more secure messaging app? How do you move all of your friends and family over to something else? You don't. It is the standard, as poor as that is. Choose to not have Google track your every move? You can't, unless you don't have a phone that doesn't have a single app made by Google on it.
The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution affords us the RIGHT to privacy, but apparently at the cost of being a luddite. So here's the question: is it ETHICAL for a company, or any branch of the government to knowingly breach the 4th amendment by "asking" you to use a service, tool, location, etc? Are you able to live reasonably in our modern world without giving that up?
I have a cell phone that I must carry for work. Is my job forcing me to forfeit my own right to privacy?
Facebook, WhatsApp, and everyone else who is participating, in my opinion, are just vultures of the existing architecture of our modern world that put us in this position to begin with.
Just food for thought, and a welcome debate.
