In Italyas in the rest ofEurope, Whatsapp it is used daily by millions of people. If in the past we had to rely on (expensive) SMS, today everything is simpler. Whether it’s sending texts, photos, videos or voice messages, with a person or in a group, WhatsApp is the free solution that has been able to revolutionize the way we communicate through our smartphone forever.
But now, everything could change dramatically. WhatsApp threatens to withdraw from the market European, therefore also Italian. The reason? Once again, politics.
WhatsApp may stop working in Italy
The problem does not only affect WhatsApp but also other messaging apps such as Telegram and Signal.
The European Union announced that it could introducing chat controls soon. If this were the case, WhatsApp and other apps would then be obliged to provide the EU with access, upon request, to users’ personal messages, images and videos.
In other words, photos you send to friends and family could be scanned and accessed by authorities. The stated aim of the European Commission is to track down cases of sexual violence against children and prosecute the authors of the content and the people who share it. To make this possible, WhatsApp should crack its own encryption. And this, as the managements of both Signal and WhatsApp agree, is out of the question, at the cost of having to withdraw from the European market.
“There is no way to maintain the integrity of end-to-end encryption and at the same time expose encrypted content to surveillance”, explained the head of Signal’s messaging service. Already in May the company announced that it was ready to close Signal in Europe if it came to that. And WhatsApp also already has closure plans if the Commission were to impose controls on its users’ chats.
WhatsApp refuses to share users’ photos and videos with the EU
The EU plan to introduce Chat controls It’s not new, but to date the project has never come to fruition. If mandatory encryption breaking becomes a reality, WhatsApp, Signal and other messaging apps would have to scan their users’ images and videos and forward them to the authorities.
But first users should agree to such a procedure. In case of refusal by the user, he will no longer be able to send or receive images and videos, which destroys the argument that this procedure is voluntary.
Unlike Signal, WhatsApp has not yet formally declared to be ready to withdraw from Italy and Europe should such a decision be taken.
But to probe his intentions it is useful to observe what is happening in India in this time. WhatsApp, in response to the possibility of its encryption being breached within the country, has announced that it will withdraw from India if this were to happen – thus appearing ready to lose over half a billion users.
And so, the same fate could befall Italy and all of Europe.
