Beware, Documents Call The FBI Can Easily Monitor Messages And Activities On This Application

Illustrated by FBI analysts. (Wikimedia Commons / FBI)

JAKARTA - Previously undisclosed FBI documents show that monitoring WhatsApp and Facebook activity is a simple process for the bureau.

The FBI documents provide guidelines for obtaining messages and metadata legally on certain messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Viber, and others.

According to documents obtained by Rolling Stone, iMessage and WhatsApp gave the FBI access to more categories of data than any other platform, including the content and history of messages sent and received.

They also cooperate with the authorities further, if a search warrant is issued, offering data on previous backups, contact lists, and even more personal data.

WhatsApp, for example, is the only one of the nine apps described in the document that uses so-called "registrants", surveillance requests that capture the source and destination of each message for an individual.

WhatsApp generates certain user metadata every 15 minutes in response to the pen register, the FBI said, meaning that without requesting message content from WhatsApp, the metadata captures who and when someone sent the message, as well as which other users they have on the contact list.

"WhatsApp is offering all this information destroys reporters communicating with classified sources", Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior technologist at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) told Rolling Stone, as quoted by The Jerusalem Post November 30.

WhatsApp said through its spokesperson that the document "illustrates what we have said, that law enforcement does not need to crack end-to-end encryption to successfully investigate a crime."

"We carefully review, validate, and respond to law enforcement requests under applicable law, and are clear about this on our website and in regular transparency reports", the spokesperson said.

The FBI document, titled 'Lawful Access,' includes policies for iMessage, WhatsApp, Line, Viber, Telegram, Signal, Threema, WeChat, and Wickr.

Telegram and Signal are well known for their privacy protections, as Telegram is known to only provide IP addresses and phone numbers in cases of suspected terrorism.

While Signal only provides the date and time of registration and the last date of use of the application. Neither of the two provided the contents of the message to the FBI.

Further information showed that only iMessage, WhatsApp, and Line stored the message content and made it available to federal authorities, while the other six did not disclose the message content.

The document was received by Property of the People, a transparency advocacy group based in Washington DC, United States through a Freedom of Information Act request and later shared with Rolling Stone.

"Privacy is essential to a democracy", Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, told Rolling Stone.

"The ease with which the FBI monitors our online data digs into the intimate details of our daily lives threatens all of us and paves the way for authoritarian rule", he said.