“There is no limit to the type of WhatsApp message that can be viewed by Meta,” an official wrote in a January 16 email sent to more than a dozen recipients at other agencies. “The misconduct of Meta and its officers, including current and former high-level executives, involve civil and criminal violations that span several federal jurisdictions.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Meta, claiming that the company’s practices violate residents’ right to data privacy.
According to The Texas Tribune, the lawsuit’s allegations largely relate to WhatsApp, a social media application that can be used to send text messages, make voice and video calls, and create group chats. WhatsApp has long advertised the strength and security of its “end-to-end encryption.”
In court documents, Paxton’s office took issue with these claims.
“Texans deserve to know whether their private communications are indeed truly private,” Paxton said in a statement. “WhatsApp markets its services as secure and encrypted, but it does not deliver on those promises. I am suing to protect Texans’ privacy and ensure that WhatsApp by Meta does not mislead Texans by unlawfully accessing private conversations and data.”
The Texas Tribune notes that Meta has for years faced allegations that it view private messages sent on WhatsApp, despite the company’s claims to the contrary.
“WhatsApp cannot access people’s encrypted communications and any suggestion to the contrary is false,” Meta spokesperson Rachel Holland said. “We will fight this suit as we continue defending our strong record on protecting people’s messages.”
The lawsuit cites whistleblower reports indicating that Meta has long been able to access WhatsApp chats. A federal Department of Commerce investigation was “abruptly closed earlier this year” after an investigator found that there was effectively “no limit” to the types of messages Meta can read.
“There is no limit to the type of WhatsApp message that can be viewed by Meta,” an official wrote in a January 16 email sent to more than a dozen recipients at other agencies. “The misconduct of Meta and its officers, including current and former high-level executives, involve civil and criminal violations that span several federal jurisdictions.”
The lawsuit appears, at this juncture, almost entirely reliant on the whistleblower report, which was published by Bloomberg earlier this year. Paxton’s office, however, also noted that Meta employees receive “plaintext” WhatsApp messages that are reported to the company by other platform users. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that WhatsApp can gain remote access to chat histories; instead, Meta claims that it retrieves allegedly offensive messages directly from the reporting party’s device. These messages are then decrypted using a key available only to the reporting user.
In its own coverage of the lawsuit, Ars Technica noted that a “thorough reverse engineering of WhatsApp would almost certainly reveal” whether gaps exist in the service’s encryption protocol.
Nevertheless, Paxton’s office insists that Meta should be held liable for any potential violation of state data privacy laws.
“The gravity of Meta’s and WhatsApp’s violation of users’ privacy and trust cannot be overstated,” the lawsuit alleges. “All users were entitled to believe their communications were private and when WhatsApp and Meta unequivocally and repeatedly promised that no one—not even WhatsApp and Meta—can access their messages.”
Sources
Texas AG sues Meta over claims that WhatsApp doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption
WhatsApp, Meta can access Texans’ private messages, AG Ken Paxton claims in lawsuit
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