(Reuters) – Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is planning to
unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of the WhatsApp, Instagram and
Facebook Messenger services and incorporate end-to-end encryption into these
apps, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The three services will, however, continue as stand-alone apps, the report said, citing four people involved in the effort.
Facebook said it is working on adding end-to-end encryption, which
protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in a
conversation, to more of its messaging products, and considering ways to make
it easier for users to connect across networks.
“There is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long
process of figuring out all the details of how this will work,” a
spokesperson said.
After the changes, a Facebook user, for instance, will be able send an
encrypted message to someone who has only a WhatsApp account, according to the
New York Times report.
Integrating the messaging services could make it harder for antitrust
regulators to break up Facebook by undoing its acquisitions of WhatsApp and
Instagram, said Sam Weinstein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of
Law.
“If Facebook is worried about that then one way it can defend
itself is to integrate those services,” Weinstein said.
But Weinstein said breaking up Facebook is viewed as an “extreme
remedy” by regulators, particularly in the United States, so concerns over
antitrust scrutiny may not have been a factor behind the integration.
MAJOR TRADEOFFS
Some former Facebook security engineers and an outside encryption expert
said the plan could be good news for user privacy, in particular by extending
end-to-end encryption.
“I’m cautiously optimistic it’s a good thing,” said former
Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now teaches at Stanford
University. “My fear was that they were going to drop end-to-end
encryption.”
However, the technology does not always conceal metadata – information
about who is talking to whom – sparking concern among some researchers that the
data might be shared.
Any metadata integration likely will let Facebook learn more about
users, linking identifiers such as phone numbers and email addresses for those
using the services independently of each other.
Facebook could use that data to charge more for advertising and targeted
services, although it also would have to forgo ads based on message content in
Messenger and Instagram.
Other major tradeoffs will have to be made too, Stamos and others said.
Messenger allows strangers to contact people without knowing their phone
numbers, for example, increasing the risk of stalking and approaches to
children.
Systems based on phone numbers have additional privacy concerns, because
governments and other entities can easily extract location information from
them.
Stamos said he hoped Facebook would get public input from terrorism
experts, child safety officers, privacy advocates and others and be transparent
in its reasoning when it makes decisions on the details.
“It should be an open process, because you can’t have it all,”
Stamos said.
(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil
in Bengaluru, Jan Wolfe in Washington and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Writing
by Katie Paul; Editing by Tom Brown)