[mu53]

Is that google's definition or your definition? not being rude, but its pretty easy to get tricky about this.

Since you are sending the data to google, isn't google an intended recipient? Google has to comply with a variety of laws, and it is likely that they are doing the best they can under the legal constraints. The law just doesn't allow systems like this.

[brookst]

If Google is employing this “one simple trick”, they will get sued into the ground for securities fraud and false advertising.

[1oooqooq]

history already proved you wrong. companies offering backdoor to abusive law enforcement are never sued.

they also employ things like exempt cases. for example, Whatsapp advertise E2E... but connect for the first time with a business account to see all the caveats that in plain text just means "meta will sign your messages from this point on with a dozen keys"

[brookst]

It’s the lying that gets companies in trouble.

The claim is that Google has implemented a security weakness and lied about it in claims to customers and investors.

Show me another company that did this, was exposed, and was not sued.

[alt227]

> It’s the lying that gets companies in trouble.

It isnt if the government have asked them to lie.

[tsimionescu]

You are extremely naive if you think a company the size of Google or Microsoft or Apple will face any serious consequence from lying about E2EE actually being open to various governments.

They have lawyers aplenty, governments would file amicus briefs "explaining" E2EE and so on. Worse case they'll settle for a pittance.

[brookst]

So all you’ve got is hypotheticals that coincidentally confirm your biases? These are giant companies. Show me where a civil suit for lying about a product’s security was defended by this kind of claim.

[ipaddr]

Those companies never get sued? Never face class action lawsuits either?

[1oooqooq]

yahoo sued the govt and was able to go public almost a decade later. as i said, history already proved that argument wrong.

[wkat4242]

Oh thanks. I've never done that before. I'll try that, it'll be very interesting to see those disclaimers.

I guess for consumer use all that stuff is hidden in the T&C legalese which is unreadable for normal people. I know the EU was trying to enforce that there must be a TL;DR in normal language but I haven't seen much effect of that yet.

[1oooqooq]

the whatsapp business account is pretty plain text... and public as the founder quit meta (billions on the table) because of this with an open letter

[gtirloni]

What's the intended recipient of your message? It's not Google, right?

You're discussing encryption in transit vs encryption at rest in this thread.

[mu53]

I agree with you, but these abstract technical systems have enough wiggle room for lawyers and marketers to bend the rules to get what they want