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'Encryption is deeply threatening to power': Meredith Whittaker of Signal
The woman in charge of the secure communication channel remains implacably opposed to the ‘disease’ of surveillance – and concerned about the sharing of personal data
In 2018, she burst into public view as one of the organisers of the Google walkouts, mobilising 20,000 employees of the search giant in a twin protest over the company’s support for state surveillance and failings over sexual misconduct. The Signal Foundation, created in 2017 with $50m in funding from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, exists to “protect free expression and enable secure global communication through open source privacy technology”. Legislation such as Britain’s Online Safety Act(OSA) and the EU’s child sexual abuse regulation contained language that could be used to ban or crack private communications, while proposals by Meta to turn on end-to-end encryption for Facebook and Instagram sparked a vicious backlash from politicians such as Priti Patel, who called the plans “catastrophic” as UK home secretary.
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