[throwaway77385]

Whatsapp messages?

It's pretty crucial to find out how these ended up with the police.

Did these people send Whatsapp messages to someone who didn't like the messages and this person then went to the police? In that case, it's back to the article and lack of definition within these laws.

If, however, the police got the whatsapp messages via some kind of mass-surveillance programme, then we have a big problem...

[account-5]

WhatsApp claims to be end to end encrypted, if the police could crack that encryption we'd all be in trouble, and meta employees extremely bad at their jobs! Most likely your first guess is correct. Encryption means nothing when you have one of the unencrypted ends of the pipe.

[skippyboxedhero]

All of the cases that I have seen have been group chats. The Act in question is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_2003#Malici... - and there is also a 2001 Act that I believe is used when the prosecutors want a custodial sentence. The application of this law to WhatsApp has been controversial.

It is also worth understanding that in the UK, the security services use specific events to push politicians (with the help of the media) into passing these laws. The Online Safety Act is a recent example, the media campaign was orchestrated by the media/police/security services, and there was a similar campaign behind the 2003 Act...every time. To imply that the laws are there to do anything other than reduce freedom is the wrong starting point.

[justsomehnguy]

It's always amusing to hear the proponents of E2E who are completely ignore xkcd/538