LCN Opinin’ 014 – John B. Nevin: Oh Noes, Whatsapp Is Comped

Posted on October 6, 2022 by John B. Nevin

A new exploit in Whatsapp has been found that could allow remote users to take control of the device. Just like the ones found in 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017. Seriously.

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and TikTok are notorious for being the worst. But almost everyone is doing some of this. Buying Donald J. Trump’s book on his website includes a signup and disclaimer that your information will be shared with 3rd parties and promotions and who knows what other crap.

Software, computer chip and device manufacturing has been captured as much as any other industries, by the various well funded intelligence services, ngos, and pseudo-ngo black operations around the world — as evidenced by the lengths real professionals have to go to secure their devices for sensitive work. Standard operating procedure for those in the know appears as paranoia to everyone else.

I have not researched the details about this exploit, or anything exploity really, but my understanding is that many apps are fully willing to share any data they legally can for profit. Additionally, engineers can choose or be compromised to introduce backdoors to be exploited by themselves or others for profit. Beyond that, there are projects that appear to be public sector commercial enterprises that are actually government / organized crime funded spy operations. I suspect some of these apps and devices have always been known to be like this, for those who know. The insanity would be believing spy agencies would not do what they are capable of doing to win wars and profit. I’d heard about Microsoft having intentional backdoors for NSA before Snowden. AT&T had phones tapped at the main switch in a project called Echelon before that.

One option is to live so that it doesn’t matter what anyone knows about you. Another is to drop technology as much as possible. Another is to casually use basic safety features and choose better apps so that at least the low-level data vaccuums miss a lot of personal information, and cat burglars that trawl the streets knocking on doors are more likely to see the lights, hear the radio, and move on. That way, you can make it more difficult and more expensive, limiting the individuals and groups who have the ability or resources to target you. But to block experts completely is not possible without serious training that I, and most of us, don’t have.

There is a solution (at least I have hope). I suspect we’ll have an IBOR Internet Bill of Rights come up in our next election. I think it has a chance to be politically viable too. Both sides are correct about how they think things are corrupt. Big business really is tyrannical, and big government is too. IBOR has a chance to minimize the damage caused by both.

I’ll be hanging with those who are skeptical of giving government any regulatory power over the internet. We learned plenty from big pharma’s capture of the FDA.