The encryption a way of preserving information of WhatsApp communications has been supporting fire from diplomats such as U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd. She examined the app after rebel Khalid Masood transferred a WhatsApp message quickly before launching an initiative on London’s Westminster Bridge in March.
“It is absolutely unacceptable there should be no room for terrorists to hide. We want to make sure organizations like WhatsApp, and there are lots of others like that, don’t give a secret place for terrorists to talk with each other,” Rudd told the News Andrew Marr show at the time.
But talking on the News “Desert Island Discs” radio show Sunday, Sandberg told that the metadata stored by WhatsApp has the potential to notify governments about potential terrorist activity.
“The goal for governments is to get as much data as possible. And so when there are communications services like WhatsApp that are encrypted, the information itself is encrypted but the metadata is not, suggesting that you send me a message, we don’t get what that message says but we know you contacted me,” she said.
“If people move off those encrypted services to go to encrypted services in nations that won’t share the metadata, the administration actually has less information, not more. And so as technology evolves these are difficult conversations, we are in close communication working into the issues all around the world.”
Sandberg recently met Rudd and told “Desert Island Discs” that Facebook and the U.K. administration are “very aligned with our goals”.
“We want to make certain all of us do our bit to stop terrorism and so our Facebook plans are very clear. There’s certainly no place for terrorism, hate, calls for violence of any sort. Our goal is to not just pull it off Facebook but to use artificial intelligence and technology to get it before it’s even uploaded to the internet.
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