The Encryption Debate Is Over:To solve this problem, Facebook announced earlier this year preliminary results from its efforts to move a global mass surveillance infrastructure directly onto users' devices where it can bypass the protections of end-to-end encryption.
In Facebook's vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms. These algorithms will be continually updated from a central cloud service, but will run locally on the user's device, scanning each cleartext message before it is sent and each encrypted message after it is decrypted.
The company even noted that when it detects violations it will need to quietly stream a copy of the formerly encrypted content back to its central servers to analyze further, even if the user objects, acting as true wiretapping service.
Facebook's model entirely bypasses the encryption debate by globalizing the current practice of compromising devices by building those encryption bypasses directly into the communications clients themselves and deploying what amounts to machine-based wiretaps to billions of users at once.
Asked the current status of this work and when it might be deployed in the production version of WhatsApp, a company spokesperson declined to comment.
After publication, a Facebook spokesperson shouted "LOOK! BEHIND YOU!" and ran away.
Turns out this entire story is mostly made-up. Schneier apologizes for publishing it: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/08/more_on_backdoo.html
The worst part is it really would not surprise me if this idea has been fielded at Facebook HQ.
When you fall for a hoax, you have a choice. You can accept that you were suckered and try to understand how, or you can convince yourself that the hoax was actually true so you were right all along.