[jolic]

It's still not entirely accurate, or at least conclusive, that WhatsApp effectively protects people against mass surveillance. It might be that there's enough other sources, messages aren't that valuable in the first place or even that mass surveillance itself, between target surveillance and everyone being a public person, isn't that important to protect people against.

I think it's much easier to conclude that WhatsApp protects peoples messages from leaking or being abused by providers and other "softer" merits.

[CiPHPerCoder]

> It's still not entirely accurate, or at least conclusive, that WhatsApp effectively protects people against mass surveillance.

Yes, it is.

Mass surveillance is, by its very nature, defeated by E2E encryption even without identity verification.

Are you thinking of targeted surveillance?

[jolic]

I'm saying that both the claim that "WhatsApp is effective" and that "it is effective against mass surveillance" might be untrue even if it is effective at E2E encryption.

You can argue that WhatsApp itself de facto doesn't effectively protect (against mass surveillance) because it only works with instant messages and a lot of data isn't instant messages. You can argue that there is still mass surveillance of metadata. And that governments could enact secret laws to force vendors to engage directly in mass surveillance of their customers through the OS (less likely in the US, more so in China, especially as Google isn't present).

Sure, it's a nitpick. It's implied that it's effective because it's a good way to use E2E. But it not necessarily explored in the article whether it effectively protects people. I'm sure someone thinks that PGP was effective against mass surveillance too. So it becomes and issue over what you think is worth protecting.