WhatsApp ordered to help out U.S agencies to spy on Chinese phones

WhatsApp and its parent company Meta has been under the radar for a while now as we saw them revealing their privacy policy to the world. Back in 2021, WhatsApp came with an update where they stated that they will be sharing information with their parent company “Facebook”. This was not approved and people demanded that this should not be implemented as it is their right as a user to share their information with whom they find feasible.

Things were taken into consideration and it was decided that the “end to end encrypted” policy would remain the same where no one except the intended receiver and sender would be able to view the messages exchanged between them, which brought a sigh of relief on the faces of customers. But there are rumors that WhatsApp is helping out its government with tracking certain IP addresses which is not cool.

As indicated by reports from a government observation application, the DEA examiners have requested WhatsApp to follow seven clients that are in China and Macau.

The investigators do not exactly know who these people are or what their names are, but the DEA has provided WhatsApp with their IP addresses so that they can observe them and all of their communications. They also want to know how much time the users are spending on the app

A “Pen Register Act” which was released back in 1986 states that a company has to comply with the government if it is a matter of national security. Although it was not revealed why they are tracking these users, but we feel that it could be related to something big.

There was another case which was dug out by Forbes that in Ohio, seven people were put under observation which included 3 from U.S and 4 from Mexico. For each, The U.S just knew their first names or their nicknames.

As these Chinese numbers remained uncensored in the DEA’s filings, Forbes was able to come up with a hypothesis of their own. They believe that the U.S government is trying to keep track of its Target Users and their links to shipping opioids which could be done over the internet via encrypted apps just like WhatsApp.

A comment was highlighted on a blog post in 2020 which indicated a contact number which was used to find out opioid related products and which also had an email associated with it which traced back to a company which traces back to China.

Although the DEA may be using the Pen Registers Act for a noble cause, the main concern for people is the fact that they do not provide much information as to why they want to access a certain app and its database. The people over Capitol Hill seem to be unbothered about the complaints made by the ACLU where they raised some questions about the law. This is why these American Agencies are able to keep their targeted users under speculation which is the violation of privacy.