by Eromose Ileso
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The popular instant messaging service WhatsApp which is owned
by Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has introduced end-to-end encryption
to messages in it services.
What this development means in a nutshell is once a
message leaves a sender’s device, they are in scrambled or unintelligent form,
and only the receiver of that message can decrypt or decode what the message
says, thereby excluding the possibility of a third party’s ability to decipher
what the message means. Third party here could include law enforcement agents,
security officers or even criminals who would now be unable to read such
messages when they are intercepted. This encryption also applies to video calls
and other file transfers.
This development comes at a time when terrorist organisations
worldwide are increasingly looking for ways to beat the sophisticated surveillance
and monitoring of their communications by different spy agencies in the Western
world. There have been calls by organisations that seek to protect the privacy of
vulnerable individuals for more to be done to see that certain communication do
not fall into the hands of wrong persons.
However, the new encryption introduced by Whatsapp, a
messaging service that has over a billion users worldwide came just after
America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took Apple Corporation to court
demanding that the technology giants should design a software that would have
enabled them to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino attackers Syed
Farook in order to get more information about the said attack that claimed the
lives of 16 persons.
The phone in question had a password used by the attacker,
and inputing the password four times would have led to the information in it to
be wiped out. But the FBI wanted a situation where software would have been designed
to enable different combinations of password without it leading to the loss of
any information.
A United States District Court was set to rule on the matter
before the FBI asked for the case to be dropped on the eve of the hearing,
because an Israeli company had devised a means to unlock the iPhone, so Apple Corp.
was no longer needed, and any ruling from the court would have been overtaken by
events.
This was inevitably a dangerous territory that pitted the authorities
against a technological giant and in-between was the issue of privacy.
While the advocates of privacy and free speech including the
likes of Amnesty International hailed the move by Whatsapp, it is yet another
setback in the fight against terrorism in the wider world.
In Nigeria, it is no longer news that terrorism has been
vested on its territory by the deadly dark acts of Boko Haram. Besides, Boko
Haram whose reign of terror has brought devastation to the North East of
Nigeria especially in Borno and Yobe states, there are other criminal gangs
that engages in kidnapping, abduction and armed robbery. And virtually these
groups, be it terrorist or criminal gangs all engage in the use of technology. They
all communicate using these instant messaging service(s).
No doubt with the introduction of Whatsapp end-to-end encryption,
it would make it even more difficult for security agents to access the
information from these devices with the app thereby denying them of vital
information that could have led to the capture of a terrorist or a criminal.
Many of these terrorist organisations and criminal gangs
already use cryptic communications to get across information within their groups,
but that was informal, these new development has made it formal for such groups
to perpetuate acts of terror by sending encrypted messages without having to be noticed by vigilant security
organisations.
What this means is that the larger society would have to pay the
price, because if an orchestrated plan to unleash terror is not stopped at its
planning stage, it means it is when the acts have been carried out and there are causalities, that is when the authorities would become aware of
such development just like the Paris and Brussels attacks as well as the UN
Building, Police headquarters and Yanya Motor Park that were bombed by Boko
Haram in Abuja.
With the advancement in technology, so also have different
groups devised means by which they beat any possible surveillance or monitoring
that are put on them by security agencies.
In Nigeria, the country
is still however, a distant time away from adequately using technology to fight
crime. Instead there is a strong reliance on instinct and raw power to unravel
certain mysteries, while on few occasions, intelligence has led to the capture of a criminal or terrorist.
It is this archaic way of criminal
investigation which has led to the various anti-corruption bodies to make
arrest at first instance before commencing investigation on the detainee. Whereas
in advanced societies, a person would have been undergoing underground
investigation without his knowledge, and when they have gathered enough
material evidence using both scientific and technological methods, such a
person would be arrested and charged on the basis of such evidence.
If continuous encryption of communication will pose a huge
problem to security agents in advanced countries when it comes to fighting
crime, what does this mean in the fight of crime in Nigeria?
Ultimately, it
would make it even harder to use a method that has not even taken off in the
first place to engage in crime fighting which is technology.
Over in the United States, the courts might have been
prevented to rule over the FBI’s plans to get Apple Corp. to develop a special
software to unlock an iPhone in respect of the San Bernardino attacks. However,
in another case, a court in New York still denied the FBI’s demands for Apple
to assist in getting data from the iPhone of a drug baron who had pleaded
guilty to the charges levelled against him. However, a higher court on 8 April eventually
granted the FBI prayers for Apple to assist in getting data out of the heavily encrypted
iPhone of the Mexican drug baron.
The lines between privacy and free speech when it comes to
fighting terrorism and criminal elements would remain a slipping slope so long
as there are bumps in the way to fight crime.
The courts will have to decide on a case by case basis
whether certain privacy of suspects should be allowed to remain absolute, because when it
comes to resolving mysteries regarding crimes, any possible information that
could aid in solving it could just be lodged in a mobile device in an encrypted
Whatsapp message.
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