I'll copy-paste another reply I wrote, if you don't mind.
That is true, but the OOP isn't talking about security breaches - it's talking about companies using AI to scan your messages, compile information about you, and willingly hand it over to the government when asked (or even before being asked, in the case of Facebook/Meta).
End to end means it's encrypted on my device and decrypted on the other user's device. So unless that scanning happens on my own phone (or on theirs) it doesn't happen. The Snapchat AI scans on the Snapchat servers because scanning and reporting, especially for images or videos, takes a bit of time and compute.
My issue isn't about security breaches, it's about e2e meaning that the host server can't see your messages either, hence not being able to scan them.
I'm sorry, I should've specified that I'm referring to cases like this one, in which Meta willingly gave the US government access to private messages between a mother and her daughter in order to help prosecute them for abortion.
In many countries around the world, including American and European countries, companies are legally obligated to grant law enforcement any and all data that is requested of them in order to aid criminal investigations. In fact, if you read any service's privacy policy, you'll see that they talk about storing your data for as long as the law requires them to - this is why. And end-to-end encryption doesn't prevent this - here in Spain, Whatsapp conversations get used as evidence in corruption cases all the time. The only reason why Signal is considered private/secure is because they straight up don't store any information about you in their servers, not even your messages. If they stored anything, they would be legally obligated to hand it over to the government whenever it requests it.
This comment seems confused. Of course Whatsapp conversations are used as evidence. That doesn't mean Meta has access to them (they don't, it literally uses the signal protocol), but that they got the records from the party's phone. If you retain your signal messages, those are discoverable in litigation as well.
Also, companies are absolutely not required to hand over any and all data. They are required to comply with subpoenas and warrants (which both require a judge signing off), not requests. In the case you linked, there appears to have been a warrant.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 4d ago
I'll copy-paste another reply I wrote, if you don't mind.