Zoom defenders cite legit reasons to not end-to-end encrypt free calls
Critics say everyone deserves it. Others say safety should be factored in, too. …
reader comments
104 with 78 posters participating, including story author
If you’ve waded into Twitter timelines for security and privacy advocates over the past five days, you’ve no doubt seen Zoom excoriated for its plans to enable end-to-end encrypted video conferencing solely for paying customers. Zoom’s millions of non-paying users won’t receive the protection so that the company can monitor meetings for child-abuse activity and other types of illegal and disturbing content, executives said.
“Oh, fuck off, @zoom_us. You don’t care about anything except money,” one critic wrote on Twitter Tuesday, five days after Reuters reported the plans. “You certainly don’t care about protecting people from the abusive overreach of police. After all, didn’t you just say non-paying customers won’t benefit from encryption b/c you want to work with law enforcement?”
The move is certainly a departure from some platforms that already offer end-to-end encryption. Signal, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp all offer the protection to all users, though few if any pay for the services. Few video conferencing services offer end-to-end encryption. Like Zoom, its competitors that do offer end-to-end crypto generally do so only for select users.
Impossible to unscramble
End-to-end encryption is vastly different from simply encrypting data in transit. Instead, it provides each user with keys that reside solely on their devices, where communications are encrypted and later decrypted (the encrypted data is usually encrypted a second time as it travels over the wire). With the provider having no access to the keys that decrypt the data, it’s impossible for law enforcement or malicious insiders to
Continue reading – Article source
