[tankm0de]

The long term problem for broad adoption of end-to-end encrypted mobile messaging is closed software ecosystems; the government will just pass a law to force Apple & Android App stores to stop distributing apps like WhatsApp that facilitate it. Game over.

add:

I suspect that code itself and the act of posting it on the internet could be interpreted as free speech. Even if not, it would difficult to stamp it out from international sites or bit-torrent. Distributing via an App "Store", even for free, could be more likely to be construed as commerce, which is already heavily regulated and for less important reasons than criminal/terrorism investigations. Google and Apple as large public corporations have fiduciary duty to their stockholders to protect their profits, which the US government can easily threaten. So there's a big weak link (and an easy lever for government to pull on) in the closed distribution of secure communications code.

[simoncion]

Such a law may well be unconstitutional. I would expect Apple and Google to forcefully petition for an injunction (or whatever) that would prevent FedGov from prohibiting them to distribute such software until the constitutionality case was decided.

[coldcode]

I expect the government to eventually under NSL demand the source code be given to them along with any necessary keys. The question at that point is do the targets say no. This of course would create standing to challenge the constitutionality of secret courts and NSLs and the like which I don't think the DOJ and FBI want to lose.

[tankm0de]

In end-to-end encryption the private keys are on the user's phone. The point of a wiretap is not to let the target know you're listening. Having the code source + user's public keys from WhatsApp is of no help in decrypting.

[simoncion]

Yup. E2E crypto with keys stored on the conversing devices shuts down all MitM attacks. It doesn't stop targeted attacks (warranted or unwarranted), but I expect that law enforcement considers passive data scraping to be much less serious than targeted surveillance.

[nickik]

The problem when considering a thread model is that you have to think what the government would do, not what they could do. The government could shut down the internet and then we are fucked.

However, the government would not do that because that would be to damaging. Passing laws as you suggest is not quite as unlikely, as we see from the Apple case but its still a pretty tall order.

My big worry is that they stop trying the legal way and start requiring backdoors threw secret orders and such.

[mkhpalm]

They wouldn't ever do anything that forward facing to the public. What they do is pass laws to put pressure on makers of apps like whatsapp to build them their own personal back door.