Jan Koum: “I couldn't agree more with everything [Apple] said”

Jan Koum is a WhatsApp co-founder. WhatsApp is notable, I think, in this debate specifically because WhatsApp partnered with Moxie&#x27;s Open Whisper Systems for end-to-end encryption.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8624212" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8624212</a>

It&#x27;s gotta be so frustrating. Here&#x27;s this little thing that could answer all your questions, maybe. If you could just open it, you could easily solve many mysteries. And the only people who can help won&#x27;t.<p>I don&#x27;t envy the job of law enforcement. It must feel like at times that everyone is standing in your way. But where does it stop?<p>If only we could track everyone all the time...<p>If only we could watch everyone in their homes all the time...<p>If only we could open everyone&#x27;s safes whenever we needed to...<p>Yes, you could solve many mysteries with all of the keys. But it&#x27;s not your information. You&#x27;re not owed it. No one is owed the answer to any question.<p>I hope law enforcement understands someday what a destructive request they&#x27;ve made, but I&#x27;m guessing like anything else addictive, that one taste will just lead to more.

I really respect Jan. I saw him talk at Startup School a few years ago and what really impressed me was his non-traditional path to becoming a tech billionaire. He had a long career at Yahoo! before founding WhatsApp. He&#x27;s a role model we should be looking at. Not young college kids who can dupe old investors into giving them millions for vaporware.<p>It&#x27;s also important that he&#x27;s speaking out in opposition to these government tactics. Hopefully Zuckerberg will follow suit but if history tells us anything it&#x27;s that Facebook is rather compliant and doesn&#x27;t take security seriously.

WhatsApp doesn&#x27;t seem very secure:<p><i>As of December 1, 2015, WhatsApp has a score of 2 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation&#x27;s secure messaging scorecard. It has received points for having communications encrypted in transit and having completed an independent security audit. It is missing points because communications are not encrypted with a key the provider doesn&#x27;t have access to, users can&#x27;t verify contacts&#x27; identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, the code is not open to independent review, and the security design is not properly documented</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WhatsApp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WhatsApp</a>

Why should I trust a company that works with NSA and makes money on information about me to protect my privacy and &quot;fight&quot; government. I see his post as nothing more than PR move - &quot;we&#x27;re the good guys&quot; - before we find out that they cooperated with agencies. Am I alone in this opinion?

Will Google step forward too?

Imagine if Donald Trump reaches the White House what would happen. I bet an scenario of much more hardcore surveillance.

and Microsoft said?

Jan Koum is WhatsApp&#x27;s co-founder and current CEO, and a Facebook board member. I had this in the original title but it seems to have gotten removed—sorry!

I noticed several people asking, and was wondering myself: Jan Koum is one of the WhatsApp cofounders.

Is this someone I should know about?

What is suspicious about this Cook&#x27;s statement is that he was able to publish it. I believe this kind of government requests is usually made with a strong non-disclosure agreement with severe consequences if disclosed. So, either the consequences were not that bad or Apple has chosen to ignore them for the good cause.<p>Or ... something &quot;fishy&quot; is going on and this article is just a bait by Apple to let its customers believe they do care about privacy ... while in reality the situation might be entirely different. And the &quot;best&quot; thing is that ordinary people will never know for sure, because with Apple&#x27;s proprietary software philosophy, there is no way to tell.

This specific encryption debate is THE TURNING POINT around this debate.<p>The NSA has [most likely] found a way to penetrate Apple&#x2F;Google&#x2F;MS&#x2F;FB for specific targets i.e. they can get the info on any specific person&#x2F;group covertly. The attack surface is just too large - TAO, Zero-Days, Insider threats, Financial threats, etc. The problem with that is things like needing &quot;Parallel Construction [1]&quot; to legally prosecute.<p>What the FBI is now doing is using a recent horrible tragedy to force SV companies to establish a precedent. Make no mistake, this has been long time coming. The Feds want to set a precedent both legal and &#x27;cultural&#x27;. Ultimately Apple might cave, but the fact that they are raising a stink is very good news. Time for other heavyweights to join the chorus.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thefreethoughtproject.com&#x2F;parallel-construction-law-enforcement-illegally-collected-evidence-criminal-prosecutions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thefreethoughtproject.com&#x2F;parallel-construction-law-e...</a>