The article below might very well explain why the investigation into Salt Typhoon was suspended by the new administration.

"U.S. authorities installed backdoors to mass-monitor their own citizens. Someone hacked the backdoors, and millions of Americans' communications ended up in unintended hands."

VPN firm warns against encryption backdoor in new ad

Date:
Thu, 23 Jan 2025 17:26:27 +0000

Description:
Mullvad VPN has been running three ad campaigns within less than 2 weeks to raise awareness of the dangers of data collections.

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Through a cartoon-style FBI agent, the Swiss company Mullvad seeks to shed light on the tensions between technologists and law enforcement around encryption.

On one side, the recent Salt Typhoon hack which compromised all major US telecoms prompted US authorities to call on citizens to switch to encrypted communications . At the same time, however, the FBI referred to "responsibly managed encryption." For Mullvad, this means one thing creating backdoors to end-to-end encryption.

"This proves they have not understood anything at all and are not learning
from their mistakes. They dont understand the basics: if you create
backdoors, they will be exploited by others, as happened in the Salt Typhoon case," Jan Jonsson, CEO at Mullvad, told TechRadar, adding that the campaign
is a way to raise greater awareness around this issue. U.S. authorities installed backdoors to mass-monitor their own citizens. Someone hacked the backdoors, and millions of Americans' communications ended up in unintended hands.

Encryption which refers to scrambling data into an unreadable form to
prevent unauthorized access is the guarantee that your messages (for
example, when you use Signal or WhatsApp) or internet connections (think of
how virtual private network (VPN) apps work) remain private between you and
the receiver.

Despite recognizing the importance of using encrypted messaging apps , law enforcement has long argued that police officers should be able to access
these encrypted messages to catch the bad guys.

This is not a prerogative for US authorities, either. EU lawmakers, for example, are also pushing for the so-called Chat Control proposal. If
enacted, this will require all encrypted communication providers to create
such an encryption backdoor to allow the monitoring of all citizens' chats on the lookout for illegal content.

Ironically, the day that Mullvad decided to run its ad in the New York Times, the Financial Times published an article reporting the Europol chief's endorsement, yet again, of "responsible encryption."

"Mass surveillance does not belong in democratic societies. We want people to know their rights and demand their rights," said Jonsson. "And we want the politicians to realize that there is no such thing as anonymous data, that
data collected eventually leaks, and that it is high time for authorities to stop mass-surveilling their own and other populations."

More of Mullvad's privacy-focused ads

This was the third in a series of ads, run by Mullvad, in the popular US
paper to raise awareness about the risks of intrusive data collection and sharing.

Jonsson said: "We cannot have a society where peoples lives are tracked under the excuse that the data is anonymous when patterns in the data reveal the person behind it."

By tracking everything people do online, according to Mullvad, Big Tech companies are mapping people's ideas before they're even voiced aloud,
de-facto undermining their right to free expression.

The VPN provider also believes that banning metadata collection meaning all the information about the data that is not the content could also be an easy way to resolve the problem of misinformation from its root. That's because Jonsson said: "Personal data is what is used to create the algorithms that
fuel the spread of misinformation."

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpn-firm-warns-against-encr yption-backdoor-in-new-ad

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