WhatsApp, encryption of voice calls and group chat in a few weeks

In the United States Tim Cook he has ignited much debate with his famous open letter. In this debate on the one hand we find many of the technology signatures in favor of a cryptographic security for data on a device that is insurmountable even under governmental request, other judicial bodies and politicians, who would like some backdoors and vulnerabilities to make voluntary easier access to the data within well-circumscribed situations. In between is Barack Obama, who warns that it is not correct, in his view, to have absolute positions on the subject.

Take sides in this battle even WhatsApp, whose team is implementing some maneuvers to make it even safer when its instant messaging client. WhatsApp offers already in 2014 an end-to-end encryption for text conversations, but today does not offer the same functionality for voice conversation. Encryption on calls and group chat will come, however, in the coming weeks, according to two internal sources quoted by the Guardian. The company owned by Facebook today but never widely publicized this characteristic, as he never did know in detail to the public mass technology that uses for data protection service users of content in it.

The team behind WhatsApp has underestimated the feature in the past, and it is precisely for this reason probably that many competitors have managed to gain a foothold in the category despite the very big public success of which boasts the Jan Koum service. The news comes following the detention of one of Facebook executives in Brazil, which has been held back by the legal authorities after he was unable to provide a backup of the messaging service requested by the authorities data.

The application fact digit of all the text messages between sender and receiver in such a way that the operators of the service can not have access to them in any way. The South American country had blocked access to WhatsApp during last December, probably for the same reasons and an addition more granular encryption even in voice calls, and not only in text messages, may actually exacerbate problems in those countries where the authorities require, favored by law, access to user data.

The Guardian points out that Google, Facebook and Snapchat are thinking of introducing protection via encryption on some of the services offered, probably in response to the events that occurred in recent weeks in Brazil and the USA. Many of the technology companies are already focusing on strengthening the encryption, even if the talks between the industry and the political bodies and signatures of American justice are essentially still in full swing.