The backups aren't. Same with iMessage. end-to-end has become a marketing buzzword, any large scale deployment gets backdoored (via either key or plaintext escrow) at the endpoints, to FISA/PRISM providers who have to turn it over to the state without a warrant.

China has the same setup with providers in their country.

WhatsApp and iMessage simply aren't private when the providers get ~100% of the plaintext transiting the service within 24 hours (immediately in the case of iMessage, as thanks to "Messages in iCloud" (cross-device sync) being on by default, the MIC sync key is escrowed to Apple in a non-e2e backup, permitting them to decrypt the sync traffic in realtime).

Truly private, easily accessible, society-wide private communications are a threat to sovereignty, and governments know this, which is why even europe (leading the way on individual privacy and rights on this planet, in general) is reluctant to permit it. Same goes for truly censorship-resistant, easily accessible payment systems. They allow you to coordinate (private/uncensorable messaging) and pay for (uncensorable payments) an army outside of state prerogatives, in theory.

> [...] as thanks to "Messages in iCloud" (cross-device sync) being on by default [...]

Messages in iCloud is off by default AFAIK.

It's not, but in the case of Messages in iCloud being off, the actual plaintext of the iMessages themselves is included in the (non-e2e) iCloud Backup (which I am 100% positive is on by default).

In the case of MIC being on, then the MIC sync key is included in the (again, non-e2e) iCloud Backup.

MIC on = MIC sync key escrow via iCloud Backup (realtime iMessage content decrypt)

MIC off = iMessage plaintext escrow via iCloud backup (nightly)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

Before you mention "but you can turn off iCloud Backup!": these default settings affect all of your conversation partners, too, so even if you disable iCloud Backup, it's likely that your messages are still getting escrowed from the devices of the people you talk to.

For the purposes of an eu law requiring facebook to scan messages, facebook can’t scan icloud backups.

Any law that the EU can apply to Facebook to scan messages readable by Facebook that transit Facebook's service, the EU can apply to Apple to scan messages readable by Apple that transit Apple's service.

Would apple/google be able to comb through that data though? WhatsApp backups are not e2e encrypted, but they're still encrypted with a key generated by Facebook the moment you login to your account, and probably refreshed periodically. Technically, Facebook would be the only one capable of turning the encrypted backup into plaintext, so if google wanted to do something with your messages backup it would have to knock at Facebook's door first.

This kind of cooperation is definitely illegal in this moment and I'm nut sure future legislation will require services to set up persistent encryption keys exchange among services so that a backup file that is supposed to be encrypted on a cloud storage can be continually scanned for harmful/unlawful content by another service. If the EU or any government wanted to set up such kind of monitoring, they will require these services to adapt in a way that these kind of gimmicks with backups and encryption keys are not needed

The metadata hosted on Facebook's servers is worth more than the actual content.

People keep repeating this trope about metadata being worth more than content. Where does this come from?

I can understand that metadata is valuable -- of course it is. You can learn a lot from metadata. But more valuable than the actual content? Give me a break.

Something can be bad without being literally the worst thing ever. Pointless exaggeration like this does nothing for the cause of privacy.

I think it's important to consider scale when discussing metadata vs raw content

Getting high precision is difficult when done on "all content", especially considering the multitude of languages and dialects in Europe. At a certain point, more data does not result in better output, sometimes it's actually detrimental

The patterns that arise from metadata are much more generalisable and there's less of it, so it's easier to search through

Metadata interesting lets you hone in on what you want to inspect full content on. It's definitely an upgrade

The article is a bit older, but metadata analytics can be used to "unveil" the key conspirators that led to what we today know as the "American Revolution"[1] - please note how little data they use to find out who calls the shots, and whom you might want to disappear if you wanted to keep the colonies closely aligned with George III.

Widespread enough, this can be used to find dissidents today, suppressing ethically legitimate uprisings against injustice.

[1] https://blog.wolfram.com/2017/06/29/analyzing-social-network...

Metadata is highly structured, standardized, and easily understandable by machines. Content is not.

Because processing is easier for metadata but analysis of it can answer many questions.

Direct communication is only interesting for direct surveillance.