7 ms·

Bloomberg Misreports on Whatsapp Story

195 points by 2arrs2ells 7y ago

lousken 7y ago
readable version https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html
withinrafael 7y ago
Unless I'm missing something, it appears Mr. Stamos (and others) are refuting the original reporting [1][2] with details from the US CLOUD act [3]. The original reporting did not mention the CLOUD act and only mentioned an upcoming "treaty" or "accord". While it's a reasonable guess that these are related, I fear the Hacker News headline prematurely burns Bloomberg with unsubstantiated opinion that currently holds no more weight than the original reporting. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-28/facebook-whatsapp-will-have-to-share-messages-with-u-k-police https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-28/facebook-... [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-can-access-suspects-facebook-and-whatsapp-messages-in-deal-with-us-q7lrfmchz https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-can-access-suspect... [3] https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact
- otterley 7y ago
  Quoting John Gruber: "Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true."
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    The same reporters (IIRC) also published the “NSA knew about Cloudbleed for ages” story which was similarly incredible.
    - edoceo 7y ago
      "incredible"? Or "uncredible"?
      - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
        The latter is what the former originally means :)
    - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
      Sorry, it was Heartbleed actually.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    I have seen absolutely no evidence that the story was bullshit. It's clearly unconfirmed and probably shouldn't have been reported for that reason. But there's a difference between unproven and proven wrong. Did I miss some evidence that proved this story false?
    - zepto 7y ago
      It is literally a conspiracy theory. Why should anyone believe it true without some kind of proof.
      - solidasparagus 7y ago
        I generally believe that the default reaction to a news story should be "it might be true, it might not". The ratio depends on the claim and the evidence. This is an extraordinary claim with mediocre-to-weak evidence, so I'm on the "unlikely to be true" side, but it's hardly an impossible story. The story is essentially that there was a breakthrough in an effort that everyone in the world is pursuing (hardware supply chain attacks) and then everyone involved behaved as you'd expect them to behave (secretive at first and then defensively once the secret was out). While I don't expect people to believe it, I do expect some evidence if you're going to call it bullshit.
- phyzome 7y ago
  Bloomberg lost a shitload of credibility with the implants story. I'd definitely believe Alex Stamos over Bloomberg.
- 2arrs2ells 7y ago
  If you remove the word "encrypted" from this sentence in the Bloomberg article: Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter. Then the article matches Stamos's account entirely. With the word "encrypted," the article makes no sense – it would take legislation to force US companies to build backdoors to encryption, not an international accord. I agree the HN headline could be better (my fault!) - but my money is on another Bloomberg security reporting error. Hope they actually issue a correction this time...
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    > With the word "encrypted," the article makes no sense – it would take legislation to force US companies to build backdoors to encryption, not an international accord. It makes sense if you take it to mean that WhatsApp with share the encrypted messages, without any means to decrypt. It's not a very meaningful statement though, and will only confuse people.
    - larkeith 7y ago
      If that's truly what they mean, that's far more than confusing - it's flat-out deceptive.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    The resolution is simple. Originally, WhatsApp encrypted end-to-end, and they had no ability to examine traffic. Now, it is encrypted between you and the server, decrypted and scanned, and then re-encrypted for transmission. If you want end-to-end encryption, you will need to use something else.
    - eloff 7y ago
      It is still encrypted end-to-end. I don't know where you're getting your information from.
  - fencepost 7y ago
- brown9-2 7y ago
  What is the name of the upcoming treaty or accord? Seems like if that is accurate then it should not be a mystery.
2arrs2ells 7y ago
HN discussion of Bloomberg story (with denial from head of Whatsapp): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100588
alephnan 7y ago
I’m questioning the journalistic integrity of Bloomberg after the author of the article about the “Big Hack”, with China infiltrating hardware, received a promotion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg-reporter-challenged-big-hack-story-gets-promoted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg...
- paulcole 7y ago
  Promote the incompetent to the level where they can do the least amount of damage.
  - devicetray0 7y ago
    Down?
    - paulcole 7y ago
      No, I’m feeling fine thanks.
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    Ah, the Peter Principle. But I'm not so sure it will work. Maybe the higher level will allow more editorial decisions, and we've already seen problems there.
    - paulcole 7y ago
      Close but it’s the Dilbert Principle. Who downvoted this? It’s true! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
      - Thorrez 7y ago
        Hmm, I think it could be either, depending on whether leadership viewed the author as incompetent. If leadership viewed the author as incompetent, it's the Dilbert Principle. If leadership viewed the author as competent, it's the Peter Principle.
buboard 7y ago
Whatever happened to those chips that were tweaked?
blibble 7y ago
isn't this the company where their reporters bonuses are highly influenced by how much their stories move the markets? https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa... in such an environment it seems obvious that they're going to stretch stories
alister 7y ago
Sorry for a meta comment here, but does anyone enjoy long articles in “Twitter format”? The formatting is ugly, it’s transient, and beholden to a third party’s whims. Much better would be a blog article and a link to it from Twitter.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  The writing is usually bad, too, and in a narrow range of style. I suspect these long threads are not read as often as they are favorited by other people hoping the favor will be returned.
- sroussey 7y ago
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    Threadreaderapp is like taking PREP for AIDS. You still have a root issue.
  - anon4242 7y ago
    LOL! Making the Internet readable again!
- LordAtlas 7y ago
  Anything more than 3 tweets in a thread is painful to read.
- choiway 7y ago
  Was thinking the same thing! When did this become a thing?
ltbarcly3 7y ago
Another great opportunity to quote the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" (coined by Michael Crichton). For those who don't know, Gell-Mann won the nobel prize in physics. He pointed out that whenever you see a news article about a topic you personally know about, the article is always shockingly inaccurate. The 'amnesia' part is that you immediately forget that every article you have expertise on is hilariously inaccurate, and assume that articles you read are accurate the rest of the time. Lesson: news articles are written by non-experts trying to sum up some things that they do not understand, and with exceptions I am unaware of, never accurate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...
- comex 7y ago
  Most news articles are a whole lot more accurate than these ones were.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
mcarmichael 7y ago
Forbes has a reasonably clear article on the subject, although they do themselves no credit by inserting gratuitous Twitter snark about their competitor into their article presentation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/29/whatsapp-backdoorwill-facebook-be-forced-to-break-message-encryption-as-reported/#732a215e1b38 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/29/whatsapp-...
PeterStuer 7y ago
Why oh why are people writing long copy in a gazillion tweets instead of anouncing/advertising the article there and then referring to a place more suited for that type of essay?
- mrunkel 7y ago
  Kids these days, am I right? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html I find it annoying too, but some people really like twitter/have an established following there.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    What does age have to do with it? I get the popularity of Twitter, but I don't see how anyone can think this sort of tweetsalami essay writing can beat having a summary in 1-3 tweets with a reference to a webpage that has the full essay.

195 points by 2arrs2ells 7y ago

readable version https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html

withinrafael 7y ago

Unless I'm missing something, it appears Mr. Stamos (and others) are refuting the original reporting [1][2] with details from the US CLOUD act [3]. The original reporting did not mention the CLOUD act and only mentioned an upcoming "treaty" or "accord". While it's a reasonable guess that these are related, I fear the Hacker News headline prematurely burns Bloomberg with unsubstantiated opinion that currently holds no more weight than the original reporting. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-28/facebook-whatsapp-will-have-to-share-messages-with-u-k-police https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-28/facebook-... [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-can-access-suspects-facebook-and-whatsapp-messages-in-deal-with-us-q7lrfmchz https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-can-access-suspect... [3] https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact

otterley 7y ago
Quoting John Gruber: "Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true."
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  The same reporters (IIRC) also published the “NSA knew about Cloudbleed for ages” story which was similarly incredible.
  - edoceo 7y ago
    "incredible"? Or "uncredible"?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
      The latter is what the former originally means :)
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    Sorry, it was Heartbleed actually.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  I have seen absolutely no evidence that the story was bullshit. It's clearly unconfirmed and probably shouldn't have been reported for that reason. But there's a difference between unproven and proven wrong. Did I miss some evidence that proved this story false?
  - zepto 7y ago
    It is literally a conspiracy theory. Why should anyone believe it true without some kind of proof.
    - solidasparagus 7y ago
      I generally believe that the default reaction to a news story should be "it might be true, it might not". The ratio depends on the claim and the evidence. This is an extraordinary claim with mediocre-to-weak evidence, so I'm on the "unlikely to be true" side, but it's hardly an impossible story. The story is essentially that there was a breakthrough in an effort that everyone in the world is pursuing (hardware supply chain attacks) and then everyone involved behaved as you'd expect them to behave (secretive at first and then defensively once the secret was out). While I don't expect people to believe it, I do expect some evidence if you're going to call it bullshit.
phyzome 7y ago
Bloomberg lost a shitload of credibility with the implants story. I'd definitely believe Alex Stamos over Bloomberg.
2arrs2ells 7y ago
If you remove the word "encrypted" from this sentence in the Bloomberg article: Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter. Then the article matches Stamos's account entirely. With the word "encrypted," the article makes no sense – it would take legislation to force US companies to build backdoors to encryption, not an international accord. I agree the HN headline could be better (my fault!) - but my money is on another Bloomberg security reporting error. Hope they actually issue a correction this time...
- Marsymars 7y ago
  > With the word "encrypted," the article makes no sense – it would take legislation to force US companies to build backdoors to encryption, not an international accord. It makes sense if you take it to mean that WhatsApp with share the encrypted messages, without any means to decrypt. It's not a very meaningful statement though, and will only confuse people.
  - larkeith 7y ago
    If that's truly what they mean, that's far more than confusing - it's flat-out deceptive.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  The resolution is simple. Originally, WhatsApp encrypted end-to-end, and they had no ability to examine traffic. Now, it is encrypted between you and the server, decrypted and scanned, and then re-encrypted for transmission. If you want end-to-end encryption, you will need to use something else.
  - eloff 7y ago
    It is still encrypted end-to-end. I don't know where you're getting your information from.
- fencepost 7y ago
brown9-2 7y ago
What is the name of the upcoming treaty or accord? Seems like if that is accurate then it should not be a mystery.

2arrs2ells 7y ago

HN discussion of Bloomberg story (with denial from head of Whatsapp): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100588

alephnan 7y ago

I’m questioning the journalistic integrity of Bloomberg after the author of the article about the “Big Hack”, with China infiltrating hardware, received a promotion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg-reporter-challenged-big-hack-story-gets-promoted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg...

paulcole 7y ago
Promote the incompetent to the level where they can do the least amount of damage.
- devicetray0 7y ago
  Down?
  - paulcole 7y ago
    No, I’m feeling fine thanks.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  Ah, the Peter Principle. But I'm not so sure it will work. Maybe the higher level will allow more editorial decisions, and we've already seen problems there.
  - paulcole 7y ago
    Close but it’s the Dilbert Principle. Who downvoted this? It’s true! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
    - Thorrez 7y ago
      Hmm, I think it could be either, depending on whether leadership viewed the author as incompetent. If leadership viewed the author as incompetent, it's the Dilbert Principle. If leadership viewed the author as competent, it's the Peter Principle.

buboard 7y ago

Whatever happened to those chips that were tweaked?

blibble 7y ago

isn't this the company where their reporters bonuses are highly influenced by how much their stories move the markets? https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa... in such an environment it seems obvious that they're going to stretch stories

alister 7y ago

Sorry for a meta comment here, but does anyone enjoy long articles in “Twitter format”? The formatting is ugly, it’s transient, and beholden to a third party’s whims. Much better would be a blog article and a link to it from Twitter.

1123581321 7y ago
The writing is usually bad, too, and in a narrow range of style. I suspect these long threads are not read as often as they are favorited by other people hoping the favor will be returned.
sroussey 7y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  Threadreaderapp is like taking PREP for AIDS. You still have a root issue.
- anon4242 7y ago
  LOL! Making the Internet readable again!
LordAtlas 7y ago
Anything more than 3 tweets in a thread is painful to read.
choiway 7y ago
Was thinking the same thing! When did this become a thing?

ltbarcly3 7y ago

Another great opportunity to quote the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" (coined by Michael Crichton). For those who don't know, Gell-Mann won the nobel prize in physics. He pointed out that whenever you see a news article about a topic you personally know about, the article is always shockingly inaccurate. The 'amnesia' part is that you immediately forget that every article you have expertise on is hilariously inaccurate, and assume that articles you read are accurate the rest of the time. Lesson: news articles are written by non-experts trying to sum up some things that they do not understand, and with exceptions I am unaware of, never accurate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...

comex 7y ago
Most news articles are a whole lot more accurate than these ones were.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

mcarmichael 7y ago

Forbes has a reasonably clear article on the subject, although they do themselves no credit by inserting gratuitous Twitter snark about their competitor into their article presentation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/29/whatsapp-backdoorwill-facebook-be-forced-to-break-message-encryption-as-reported/#732a215e1b38 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/29/whatsapp-...

PeterStuer 7y ago

Why oh why are people writing long copy in a gazillion tweets instead of anouncing/advertising the article there and then referring to a place more suited for that type of essay?

mrunkel 7y ago
Kids these days, am I right? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html I find it annoying too, but some people really like twitter/have an established following there.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  What does age have to do with it? I get the popularity of Twitter, but I don't see how anyone can think this sort of tweetsalami essay writing can beat having a summary in 1-3 tweets with a reference to a webpage that has the full essay.