Prominent CEOs from the messaging app industry participated in a panel discussion with Mallory Knodel, the chief technology officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology during RightsCon.
Knodel was encouraged by the company's pledges to back initiatives form the Global Encryption, according to a June 7 news release. The discussion focused on the need to protect end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from overreaching regulation.
“We would shut down before we adulterate or undermine the privacy promises that encryption is the technological guarantee,” Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker said in the release. “We do not have a reason to exist if not to provide a truly private mechanism for communications. That is where we stand.”
Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Element, echoed Whittaker’s statement, noting it is important not to undermine E2EE, the release reported.
“We’ll make a commitment to never undermine E2EE by implementing clientside surveillance – and even if Element is blocked from app stores as a result, we commit to continue to grow Matrix as an open, secure, decentralized network so users can run their own servers and pick their own clients and have full autonomy over their own communication,” he said in the news release.
Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp at Meta, cited ongoing global attacks and highlighted the company’s commitment to E2EE, and noted his company is “engineered to be private from the ground up and Meta is committed to end-to-end encryption as an enabler of human rights,” the release said
Raphael Robert, from OpenMLS, stressed the important of privacy, according to the release.
“Privacy is the new frontier,” he said in the release. “Protecting data and metadata is vital in a connected world. The trend is that users demand more encryption to feel safe, not less.”
Knodel came away pleased with the support from the Global Encryption Coalition and pointed to the unity as a key, according to the news release.
“As long as the E2EE app companies are strongly aligned, it will be much more difficult to cave on threats to encryption like allowing back doors of any kind, including client-side scanning, no matter the jurisdiction,” she said in the news release.
