A few months ago, a friend recommended a free application called ‘Whatsapp’ for my Android phone… It allows me to send encrypted text and voice messages, free, anywhere in the world. It means I can keep in touch with my sister ,who travels overseas for her job. Whatsapp saves her having to pay roaming fees.
This an excellent application. But, because I’m a cynic and a tad paranoid, it seems a bit too good to be true, to me. Be most interested in hearing from a voice of reason.
I don’t know if it is to be trusted or not, but I have heard that Jared Kushner (Trump son in law) has used it to communicate with foreign entities, and thus hide his communications (which as a white house official should not be hidden or destroyed). It makes the outrage over H. Clinton having a private email server, seem pathetically petty in comparison. But apparently not only our current POTUS but also his relatives are above the law, for now.
Kushner used it? A bit of a back handed compliment. From what I’ve read, I don’t get the impression he’s tech-savvy. That he’s a member of what seems to be a rather dysfunctional family is not much of testimonial.
I think they’re not so much above the law as above Congressional displeasure. I’m on tenter hooks about the fortunes of the entire Trump family once Donald leaves office.
Do you think he’ll be elected for a second term? My perception is that his voter base seems stupid enough to keep him. I wonder if an anti Trump election campaign will be the way to go? My perception is his voters will see him as the under dog in such circumstances, being criticised by jealous opposition.
All of your suppositions, I believe to be correct. He could be re-elected if the facade of a great economy can be maintained, and if there is any division in the concerted opposition to his re-election. If so, he will not even ever be subject to some laws that he has broken, because the statute of limitations will have run out. While he is POTUS, and thus controls the “Justice” Department, he cannot be accused of a crime by them, per policy. Hence the Mueller report, which, ironically contains quite strong evidence of Obstruction of Justice, could not indicate that he had committed the crime.
And the impeachment process, available under the Constitution, cannot remove Trump from office because not enuf Repub Senators will vote for his removal. Also, the Constitutional responsibility to oversee the executive branch, may also be moot, as Trump opposes every effort of the House of Representatives to attain any info that might incriminate him. It is not legal for Trump to simply refuse to turn over info, but he seems to have decided to see how long he can get away with not turning ANYTHING over. And he may be able to run the clock out until the next election, or until the public may perceive the Congressional efforts to be unacceptable. He has a rock solid base of close to 40% of voters, so he only needs to sway a relatively small additional % to believe his persistent, ubiquitously repeated, false narrative. He is above the law, the desire of every eventual autocrat. It is no longer beyond reasonable conjecture that Trump could become the USA’s first Dictator. But that is still a longshot, I hope.
Oh and Kushner went from one dysfunctional family to another. His biological father is a white collar criminal. (As Kushner, probably also is, but not yet caught.) But he has a lot on his plate. Beyond reforming the entire US criminal Justice system (he actually did make some progress on that by helping a law get passed to release some non violent felons from excessive sentences) to creating Peace in the Middle East, among other things.
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook so you probably won’t be interested.
“WhatsApp is owned by Facebook so you probably won’t be interested.”
Oh Flunngle!
Ive been using the app for a few months. I haven’t been able to find anything untoward. I guess I’ll need to do a bit of digging. I can’t imagine that plonker Zuckerberg doing anything simply for the public good.
FWIW Facebook didn’t develop the app, they just bought it.
Well since Facebook owns it, what could go wrong? They have repeatedly demonstrated their competence and dedication to protecting personal info of members absolutely. If by “protecting personal info of members” one means “selling the personal info of members as their primary product”.
I’m an application developer, but I don’t do cell phones. Also, I never developed my security skills either. My point is, even with all my experience and access to an IT department, I have no idea how you evaluate if something like this is truly secure.
You might use it for private info that would only be embarrassing if it got out. But for info that could do you real harm if it got out… seriously, why would you trust anything to do with Facebook, at this point?
Just so.
The app was recommended by a techie mate. Retired computer programmer. I’ve checked with him. He agrees with me that it’s probably better not to trust Facebook. That we can’t imagine what harm does not mean there isn’t any. One is not paranoid if the barstards are really out to get one.
He’s going to see if there is an open source version around.
Just a bit of advice: almost everything you interact with online does the same with your data. Facebook isn’t particularly malevolent here.
Google is probably the worst of all big tech.
“Google is probably the worst of all big tech.”
Oh dear.
Google is my default search engine and I use Gmail as well as icloud and Thunderbird, depending on content. .
I think I’ll use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.
PARANOID? MOI? You bet your bippy.
My wife took chain saw blades in to get sharpened for me. She’s never googled it, never did anything with chainsaws, but now she is getting chain saw blade sharpening ads on her phone. Google tracked that she went to the store that does that, and probably overheard her conversation with the guy at the counter.
Now that’s nasty.
I buy a lot of stuff on Ebay, but can’t remember getting spam. I DO have some very tight rules on my mail and ad blocker on all of my browsers. I have three.
Think I’ll keep using gmail, no problems so far.
My wife took chain saw blades in to get sharpened for me. She’s never googled it, never did anything with chainsaws, but now she is getting chain saw blade sharpening ads on her phone. Google tracked that she went to the store that does that, and probably overheard her conversation with the guy at the counter.Gotta disable google maps.