Privacy concerns raised after probe agencies retrieve personal chats

AGENCIES

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) cloned the mobile phones of Rhea Chakraborty and others, which gave them access to the WhatsApp chats of filmstars.

The cloning of Rhea’s mobile phone was done by the NCB during an investigation into a Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case.

Now concerns have been expressed over the safety of WhatsApp chats on social media. Some have questioned whether Facebook is making a genuine claim that WhatsApp’s privacy is guaranteed by end-to-end encryption, citing that probe agencies are now using WhatsApp chats as evidence.

WhatsApp released a late night statement on Thursday to clarify its stand on the matter.

In the statement, WhatsApp spokesperson said, “WhatsApp protects your messages with end-to-end encryption so that only you and the person you’re communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between can access it, not even WhatsApp. It’s important to remember that people sign up on WhatsApp using only a phone number, and WhatsApp doesn’t have access to your message content.

“WhatsApp follows guidance provided by operating system manufacturers for on-device storage and we encourage people to take advantage of all the security features provided by operating systems such as strong passwords or biometric IDs to prevent third parties from accessing content stored on device.”

The NCB’s investigation in the drugs case linked to Sushant Singh Rajput’s death case has caught up with several Bollywood A listers after their WhatsApp chats over banned drugs surfaced.

Some WhatsApp chats have surfaced in the media, reportedly between Rhea and others, and the probe agency is now focused on a group chat from 2017, allegedly between Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone and her manager Karishma Prakash. The WhatsApp chats seem to have been retrieved from Jaya Saha, who was interrogated by the NCB. Jaya was also Sushant Singh Rajput’s talent manager. Jaya, who is part of the Kwan Talent Management Agency, was also on this WhatsApp group with Deepika and Karishma.

So how are WhatsApp chats, which were considered private, coming out now?

WhatsApp says on its security settings that there is end-to-end encryption for all their messages, but the media and message back-up on Google Drive or any such Cloud services aren’t protected by WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption means that the messages are visible only to the sender and the recipient, and not even to WhatsApp.

To access encrypted WhatsApp data, security and investigating agencies can take a user’s phone and create a ‘clone’ of it on another device. This gives them access even to deleted messages with a ‘mirror image’ of a phone after which all data can be transferred to the separate device. Thereafter, it is only a matter of retrieving data which agencies do by involving forensic experts. They retrieve all kinds of data like phone call records, messages, images, WhatsApp chats, as well as the data on the phone’s Cloud service, like Google Drive or iCloud, including anything that has been deleted.

The investigation of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death led the NCB cloning actor Rhea Chakraborty’s phone in a Prevention against Money Laundering Case (PMLA). Analysing WhatsApp chats of Rhea with other entities reflected the angle of conspiracy, according to the NCB.

What about deleted data?

In case, you were wondering that you’re all safe if you’ve reset the phone and erased all the data, you’re wrong. 

Deleted files from phone’s memory can still be retrieved using forensic tools. The softwares that these agencies have access to can recover deleted files from the time the phone first booted.  The only way authorities cannot gain access to a device is when it’s physically damaged to an extent that it’s non-functional.