Tusi Tala, Staff Writer
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that US authorities, including the CIA, can access WhatsApp messages by remotely logging into usersโ devices, effectively bypassing the platformโs end-to-end encryption.
Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Friday, Zuckerberg explained that while WhatsAppโs encryption prevents Meta from viewing message content, it does not protect against physical access to a userโs phone.
His comments came in the context of a question by Rogan about Tucker Carlsonโs quest to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In February last year, while speaking about finally succeeding in talking to Putin after three years of failed attempts, Carlson blamed the US authorities, namely the NSA and the CIA, for stalling his efforts. According to Carlson, the agencies spied on him by tapping his messages and emails, and leaked his intentions to the media, which โspookedโ Moscow from talking to him. Rogan asked Zuckerberg to explain how this could have happened given encryption safeguards that are supposed to protect messages.
โThe thing that encryption does thatโs really good is it makes it so that the company thatโs running the service doesnโt see it. So if youโre using WhatsApp, thereโs no point at which the Meta servers see the contents of that message,โ Zuckerberg said, noting that even if someone were to hack into Metaโs databases, they could not access usersโ private texts. The Signal messaging app, which Carlson used, uses the same encryption, according to Zuckerberg, so the same rules apply. However, he noted that encryption does not stop law enforcement from viewing messages stored on devices.
โWhat they do is have access to your phone. So it doesnโt matter if anythingโs encrypted, they could just see it in plain sight,โ he clarified. Zuckerberg mentioned tools such as Pegasus, a spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, which can be covertly installed on mobile phones to access data.
According to Zuckerberg, the fact that usersโ private messages can be jeopardized by directly breaking into their devices is the reason Meta came up with disappearing messages, where one can have oneโs message thread erased after a certain period of time.
โIf someone has compromised your phone and they can see everything thatโs going on there, then obviously they can see stuff as it comes inโฆ So having it be encrypted and disappearing, I think is a pretty good kind of standard of security and privacy,โ he stated.
Zuckerbergโs remarks come amid ongoing debates about digital privacy and government surveillance. While end-to-end encryption is lauded for protecting user data, agencies like the CIA and FBI have argued it can impede efforts to combat crime and terrorism. A 2021 FBI training document indicated that US law enforcement can gain limited access to encrypted messages from services like iMessage, Line, and WhatsApp, but not from platforms such as Signal, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WeChat, or Wickr. Additionally, while encrypted messages cannot be intercepted during transmission, reports indicate that backups stored in cloud services may be accessible to law enforcement if an encryption key is attached.
