> No, we don’t see any of the content in WhatsApp, it’s fully encrypted

It's clear he's speaking about his company. Given Snowden, it would be monumentally stupid to make such a bare faced lie to Congress if they were reading, or facilitating the ability to read, unencrypted content.

Especially as he could have chosen not to say anything so specific. Congressman Schatz was talking about advertising. He could have just said something innocuous like: we don't have the ability to use WhatsApp content for advertising.

What he also didn't say there was whether others routinely saw with Facebooks help.

Not saying they do, just saying he didn't strictly say they didn't.

He may of also being talking in the context of using content for advertising, not surveillance.

Finally a lot of intelligence gathering is just based on who has talked to who kind of networks in the first instance, rather than content because:

1. Content can be obfuscated, but not the connections

2. Easier to store and navigate

3. Less noise

I'm not suggesting that no-one can read them. I have no idea. I am saying that his testimony makes me very comfortable that Facebook is not because he has way more to lose from lying than from not in those circumstances.

I have trouble with this logic. Also, I'm not quite clear - what are the consequences for lying to Congress?

It would be pre-2013 naive to imagine that, now that WhatsApp traffic is no longer end-to-end encrypted, no use is being made of the change.

I'm sorry, what?

Is everyone intentionally ignoring this or actually unaware?

Things stored in plain text client side, can be read in plain text client side and resyndicated.

All this focus on the first transmission being encrypted while in flight and server side is just a bit negligent.

Its a system ripe for abuse and thats it.

Not wittingly.