“Telegram hits 500 million active users amid WhatsApp backlash.” Mashable. The metrics concerning other popular end-to-end encryption messaging apps like Telegram (estimated 500 million users as of 2021) Schroeder, S. “What is the best secure messaging app?” NordVPN. followed very closely by Meta’s own Facebook Messenger with an estimated 1.3 billion users. “Two Billion Users - Connecting the World Privately.” /yrk8u64x. By comparison, since launching in 2009 and being acquired by Meta, WhatsApp has an estimated 2 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp (n.d.). “Proton, the Privacy Startup behind E2E Encrypted ProtonMail, Confirms Passing 50M Users.” TechCrunch+. The widely popular encrypted email service ProtonMail went online in 2014 and has accrued over 50 million users worldwide in seven years, utilizing its wide variety of services. Spawning from Snowden’s revelations in 2012, there has been a hyperfocus on end-to-end encryption (E2E) communication in this digital age, specifically phone and emails.

Misconceptions are rampant in the law enforcement community about how end-to-end encryption apps are used and how much law enforcement can really do to investigate that usage. The dawn of signals intelligence (SIGINT) wasn’t based on the interception of the signals, but the ability to decipher what was intercepted. If somebody were to see an encrypted text without knowing how to decrypt it, it would be unintelligible. Fundamentally, the basis of encryption lies in cryptography, the practice of encoding and decoding messages. Concerning the United States, the use of Navajo language as a code (highlighted in the 2002 film Windtalkers) was essentially our “end-to-end encryption” signal safeguard. In fact, one of the turning points of World War II was when Alan Turing, a British mathematics genius, and other mathematicians cracked the German “Enigma” code (documented in the 2014 film The Imitation Game). While an ill-informed perception is that end-to-end encryption apps will thwart any type of investigation, it is important for us in law enforcement to understand how end-to-end encryption apps work and, more importantly, how they can be investigated.įirst and foremost, the concept of end-to-end encrypted communication is nothing new and has been around a lot longer since WhatsApp was founded in 2009! From smoke signals to couriers carrying coded letters to generals in medieval warfare, being able to privately communicate sensitive messages unbeknownst to your enemy has been a staple of combat. From a law enforcement standpoint, we see those who engage in criminal activity having a preference for using end-to-end encryption apps, believing they can circumvent lawful monitoring and intercepts.

Whether it’s in the United States or countries abroad, end-to-end encryption apps like Meta’s WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal have become some of the most utilized apps in the world on both Apple and Android platforms, often with users who prefer to communicate via the apps versus standard calling and text messaging. Since Edward Snowden rose from being an unknown NSA contractor to a household name and a polarizing archetype on privacy, there has been a paradigm shift in the way people prefer to communicate.

Does qtox encrypt messages