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Flawed reporting about WhatsApp
- EternalData 9y agoGood on them for admitting to all these flaws. I'm especially interested in the fact that government officials seem to be citing articles to push people to certain communication channels.
- majewsky 9y agoHint: If site is empty for you, remove "amp." from domain name.
- yorwba 9y agoFWIW, the site worked completely fine for me in Firefox with JavaScript and cookies disabled, and even Lynx worked (but shows some mustache syntax that would be hidden by CSS otherwise).
- michaelt 9y agoIf you enable JS from theguardian.com but disable JS from ampproject.org the result is a blank page.
- Alupis 9y agoYou can also try using something like fixamp.com[1] ... not as good as having the real url from the start, but worth it for more complicated url's. [1] https://fixamp.com/ https://fixamp.com/
- gtf21 9y agoI think this is a really thorough mea culpa which is quite impressive, given the frequent failure of other newspapers to publish a prominent apology when they have got things far more wrong than this.
- moyix 9y agoYes. It would be nice if they hadn't taken 6 months to get around to it, though...
- masklinn 9y ago> I think this is a really thorough mea culpa which is quite impressive It took almost 6 months of badgering for that to finally happen though, despite an extensive and widely signed (by experts) op-ed pointing out how wrong and dangerous it was barely a week after the original article was published, and calls for corrections/retractions started within days if not hours. > given the frequent failure of other newspapers to publish a prominent apology when they have got things far more wrong than this. Getting things "far more wrong" matters less when it doesn't put lives at stakes, and you don't need to believe me on that, this correction article makes that point: > During the review I independently confirmed that a Turkish government official had used the article when, in effect, attempting to deter users from WhatsApp.
- Osmium 9y ago> It took almost 6 months of badgering for that to finally happen though, despite an extensive and widely signed (by experts) op-ed pointing out how wrong and dangerous it was barely a week after the original article was published, and calls for corrections/retractions started within days if not hours. Completely agreed, but they do fully concede this in their retraction: >This made a relatively small, expert, vocal and persistent audience very angry. Guardian editors did not react to an open letter co-signed by 72 experts in a way commensurate with the combined stature of the critics and the huge number of people potentially affected by the story. It might have taken a while for their internal review to complete but, honestly, what more can we ask for but an honest admission like this? If more media outlets could meet this standard we'd be in a much better place.
- shallot_router 9y ago>what more can we ask for but an honest admission like this? We can ask people to simply not trust traditional newspapers for reporting on stories concerning highly technical and scientific fields.
- wolf550e 9y agonon-AMP link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2017/jun/28/flawed-reporting-about-whatsapp https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2017/ju...
- nneonneo 9y agoMods: please make this the canonical link; AMP links force mobile layouts which are suboptimal on desktop.
- roywiggins 9y agoAMP links break apps on mobile too, the Guardian app tries to open guardian.com links, but AMP breaks that. Mind you, stories load faster via AMP than the app, but still.
- dom0 9y agoIncidentally, I wondered whether the Guardian has blocked the site or did something stupid, since the page took so long to load. I thought AMP stands for ACCELERATED? Edit: Actually, repeated loads take exactly as long (seven full seconds); but the scrollbar already has the correct page size. Probably some buggy scripting.
- kronos29296 9y agoWhy would anybody want AMP link on a PC? I am fuming with hate on AMP. This should be made the link instead of the current one.
- Reason077 9y agoAMP-on-the-desktop: It looks kinda weird but it loads super fast!
- the_watcher 9y agoAs someone who opens most links in new tabs (particularly when scanning the HN front page), my reaction was "Wow, that finished loading really fast!" based entirely on how long it took the favicon to replace the spinner in the tab.
- dphnx 9y agoNon-AMP link: https://theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2017/jun/28/flawed-reporting-about-whatsapp https://theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2017/jun/28...
- ReverseCold 9y agoIsn't this amp hosted on their own server? What's wrong with that?
- danjoc 9y agoThis is not the original Title. Submitter is editorializing via title. Please don't do that on Hacker News.
- mikestew 9y agoThe title of the article from the linked page is, “Flawed reporting about WhatsApp”. What editorializing are you referring to, and what is your suggested title?
- QUFB 9y agoPer HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): * If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." * Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
- danjoc 9y agoThe submission guidelines are clear about this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Use the original title. I've seen many informative titles smacked by this and made less informative. Here, an informative title is made less informative and clickbaity, with no action taken so far.
- danso 9y agoAgain, the original title was "Flawed reporting about WhatsApp". I'm a frequent reader of this kind of news but I seem to have forgotten that it was the Guardian that caused this kerfluffle. The OP's title is accurate to the content while giving much needed context. The original title makes it seems like the article is about "flawed reporting" in general, which is incorrect.
- danjoc 9y ago
- lern_too_spel 9y agoMaybe one day they'll issue a correction for their PRISM reporting too. The solution is exactly the same as the solution in this case: the editors should demand that the journalists verify their claims with experts.
- tptacek 9y agoThis is getting downvoted, but reporting on PRISM was egregiously flawed in ways that created myths about what PRISM is that persist to this day.
- willstrafach 9y agoI think it is too late - Any refuting of the original narrative will get you labeled a shill, "JTRIG", or discussion turns to "well you can't know what is going on for sure"
- te_chris 9y agoFor those who don't know, newspapers often have a Reader's editor whose job it is is to criticise and be the voice of the readers inside the newspaper. In this case, this is written by that person for the Guardian after what would appear to be a thorough investigation of the matter. There's a lot of people here saying this should have happened faster, they're likely right, but also, given how extensive and thorough this is, it is more likely an example of how old-school editorial rigour just takes a lot of time.
- stdbrouw 9y agoActually, and sadly, very few newspapers still have ombudsmen.
- chishaku 9y agoLike the NYT, which just eliminated their public editor role.
- pas 9y agoOh. Did they give any reasons?
- mtVessel 9y ago"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" Although, what Sulzberger actually said was: “Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/business/media/new-york-times-buyouts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/business/media/new-york-t...
- Karunamon 9y agoA world-weary cynical read: "Our followers on social media and readers can be ignored a lot easier than a guy in our office, so when complaints come in, we can simply sweep them under the rug"
- idlewords 9y agoIt astonishes me that the Readers' Editor, someone with long experience in journalism, thinks retracting this story would mean taking it offline as if it never happened. Frankly, I think this is a weak response. There is nothing in this investigation they could not have cleared up in January; instead, they dawdled and now they equivocate.
- eehee 9y agoThis entire conflict just seems completely absurd to me - why on earth are the 72 "experts" who signed the open letter so quick to trust WhatsApp without access to the source code?
- eehee 9y agoThanks for not telling me what I'm missing, guys! Stay classy.
- cpach 9y agoThis has been discussed at length on HN. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13382491
- WillyOnWheels 9y agoI doubt that would satisfy the anti Whatsapp crowd. It's impossible to know what binary Facebook/Whatsapp runs on their servers.
- idlewords 9y agoThe point of end-to-end encryption is that it doesn't matter what they run on their servers.
- g-clef 9y agoThe experts (no scare quotes needed, they really are experts) were commenting on the story's facts as presented. There was no need to read the source of whatsapp, as the facts as stated in the original article were overblown and based on fundamental misunderstandings of cryptography. The entire story was based on the question of "what do you do when someone you're communicating with using encryption changes keys?" Whatsapp chose to dynamically use the new key, rather than fail & force the user to verify the new key in some out-of-band way. This was described as a "backdoor" in the guardian story. That was simply false. Even calling it a vulnerability is a mis-understanding of how cryptography works and of the risk involved in that design decision.
- chicob 9y agoSpeaking of security, the new possibility of a Google Drive backup for WhatsApp messages and files has been quite overlooked imo. This backup is not e2ee, which means that if the other part is backing up data in Google Drive, then at least part of you WhatsApp history is not e2ee. Yes, it might be encrypted whithin Google Drive by whatever secure methods Google chooses, but not by you.
- acchow 9y agoPretty much every single person I know outside of the Bay Area and not working in tech believes that the government and the corresponding corporations running the service are reading all of their messages on: * Whatsapp * FB Messenger * iMessage * Hangouts They also all believe that the police can look at their Facebook posts because they have special access. This is precisely why there was minimal reaction to the Snowden revelations - what revelations?
- deepnet 9y ago> This is precisely why there was minimal reaction to the Snowden revelations - what revelations? Or perhaps the 1984 Orwellian explanation - fear of surveillance curtails dissent. E.g. perhaps there was minimal reaction because while people had always joked about the Govt. reading their messages, when Snowden revealed it was utterly true, and way worse than anyone had supposed, they became afraid to voice dissent about surveillance. They were right to fear this as Snowden's stated reason for whistleblowing was not the existence of mass surveillance but because the mass surveillance was not for national security but its primary goal was to protect the program of mass surveillance. Snowden revealed this: that the primary mission of the spying was to keep the spying secret and those who opposed the spying faced the greatest extra-legal retaliatory attacks. [1] As the recent cataclysmic cyber attacks have shown national defense was not a priority for those 3 letter agencies developing weaponised exploits. The weaponised exploits they screwed us all over by letting fall into the wrong hands, e.g. Wannacry an American state sponsored cyber-weapon funded by US tax-payer monies that wrecked the UK's National Health Service and now threatens international shipping - oopsie. [1] Snowden outlines his reasons for turning whistleblower in this conversation with Chomsky & Greenwald https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOksJKfapVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOksJKfapVM
- jiqiren 9y agothey are correct for two of the above - given a warrant from a court - FB Messenger and Hangouts messages are readable by Facebook and Google.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ngrilly 9y agoThe linked Guardian's article doesn't really explain why they were wrong. This article by Moxie, designer of the Signal Protocol, is great: https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoo....
- dang 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900
- vzaliva 9y agoIt is funny how while reading this article establishing Guardian's screw up I was nevertheless asked twice to give them money.
- jancsika 9y agoFrom the open letter: "People believe that you perform due diligence on matters critical to their lives and safety." And at the bottom of the open letter many security experts have signed in support. That is, "signed" in the colloquial sense. Small digression-- let's say a person tasked with reviewing a story in the Guardian is not an expert in security. They would really love some way to start with one or two security experts they know and trust and "fan out" to other experts based on their relationships. Is there a quick and easy way for the journalist to do that by looking at the names of cryptographers listed at the bottom of a webpage? Also: can someone explain what "due diligence" means? Is it the expectation here that a journalist not only report what would look reasonable to a non-journalist reader, but also use their considerable skill to ensure that they present their readers with verifiable facts, to the best of their ability? Even if it takes a considerable amount of time and effort on their part? Even if verifying the evidence relies on clunky, cumbersome tools that no one wants to spend time using?
- omnifischer 9y agoSad that the writer (calling herself investigative journalist - https://twitter.com/manisha_bot https://twitter.com/manisha_bot ) of the flawed article does not even mention the amended article in her twitter account.