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As a Guardian supporting member, I'm forwarding this directly to their editorial complaints. There are other publications that deserve my money if the Guardian

As a Guardian supporting member, I'm forwarding this directly to their editorial complaints. There are other publications that deserve my money if the Guardian refuses to stop being sensationalist.

tptacek 10y ago
Thank you. This is really exactly what needs to happen. My understanding, thirdhand, is that The Guardian ran this story based on a single source; Moxie apparently tried to talk to them and was rebuffed. The Guardian must retract this story, loudly and clearly. Moreover, in the future, The Guardian and every outlet like it needs to understand that stories like this require more than one source. If you've got a legitimate story about a crypto backdoor in a popular product, security researchers will fall over themselves to comment on it. As you can see in this case, they're falling over themselves to disavow it. In the last hour, we've added Collin Mulliner, Matt Blaze, Peter Honeyman (\o/), Chris Kanich, and Nicolas Christin --- and all we're doing is circulating the letter on Twitter. It'll pick up steam from there. This is not a position The Guardian or any other major news outlet should ever find itself in. This situation is what the concept of "retraction" was invented to cover.
- baybal2 10y ago
  if Whatsapp can snoop on user conversations, their app is not a secure medium of communication. It has a security hole. IT IS INSECURE
- baybal2 10y ago
  if Whatsapp can snoop on user conversations, their app is not a secure medium of communication
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  It's not a backdoor, but it's not "not a protocol flaw" either. If The Guardian had reported it as a flaw in the protocol, would you have been okay with the coverage?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    No. That's what their current reporting says, too. The reporting challenge here is the same as vaccine reporting: primum non nocere.
    - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
      But the fact is that it is a protocol flaw (deliberate choice or not). The Guardian should have inserted caveats stating that this flaw is highly unlikely to have been exploited, but I would argue that not telling the people of the flaw is as bad as telling them that it's backdoored.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        And a small number of people really are allergic to vaccines. Primum non nocere. The Guardian failed, badly, and needs to retract loudly.
        yarou 10y ago
        Even if they retracted, isn't the damage already done? The problem with yellow journalism and sensationalism is that purportedly respectable institutions spin narratives that are dangerous. I'd be curious to see some empirical data on the impact of this story, i.e. how many users switched from WhatsApp to Signal or vanilla SMS.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mootothemax 10y ago
Thank you, you've inspired me to send a similar letter. It's funny, I hadn't worked out that it's pointless to cancel a subscription if I don't first tell them why. Ironically, if they fix this, you may have kept a subscriber with them who'd otherwise have left!

As a Guardian supporting member, I'm forwarding this directly to their editorial complaints. There are other publications that deserve my money if the Guardian refuses to stop being sensationalist.

tptacek 10y ago

Thank you. This is really exactly what needs to happen. My understanding, thirdhand, is that The Guardian ran this story based on a single source; Moxie apparently tried to talk to them and was rebuffed. The Guardian must retract this story, loudly and clearly. Moreover, in the future, The Guardian and every outlet like it needs to understand that stories like this require more than one source. If you've got a legitimate story about a crypto backdoor in a popular product, security researchers will fall over themselves to comment on it. As you can see in this case, they're falling over themselves to disavow it. In the last hour, we've added Collin Mulliner, Matt Blaze, Peter Honeyman (\o/), Chris Kanich, and Nicolas Christin --- and all we're doing is circulating the letter on Twitter. It'll pick up steam from there. This is not a position The Guardian or any other major news outlet should ever find itself in. This situation is what the concept of "retraction" was invented to cover.

baybal2 10y ago
if Whatsapp can snoop on user conversations, their app is not a secure medium of communication. It has a security hole. IT IS INSECURE
baybal2 10y ago
if Whatsapp can snoop on user conversations, their app is not a secure medium of communication
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
It's not a backdoor, but it's not "not a protocol flaw" either. If The Guardian had reported it as a flaw in the protocol, would you have been okay with the coverage?
- tptacek 10y ago
  No. That's what their current reporting says, too. The reporting challenge here is the same as vaccine reporting: primum non nocere.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    But the fact is that it is a protocol flaw (deliberate choice or not). The Guardian should have inserted caveats stating that this flaw is highly unlikely to have been exploited, but I would argue that not telling the people of the flaw is as bad as telling them that it's backdoored.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      And a small number of people really are allergic to vaccines. Primum non nocere. The Guardian failed, badly, and needs to retract loudly.
      - yarou 10y ago
        Even if they retracted, isn't the damage already done? The problem with yellow journalism and sensationalism is that purportedly respectable institutions spin narratives that are dangerous. I'd be curious to see some empirical data on the impact of this story, i.e. how many users switched from WhatsApp to Signal or vanilla SMS.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mootothemax 10y ago

Thank you, you've inspired me to send a similar letter. It's funny, I hadn't worked out that it's pointless to cancel a subscription if I don't first tell them why. Ironically, if they fix this, you may have kept a subscriber with them who'd otherwise have left!