“Can you wck?” asks the former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martinez to the ex-police commissioner Enrique Garcia Castaño. And so the trace of the rest of this conversation that both were having through ‘WhatsApp’ and that is detailed in a report within the framework of the piece is lost ‘Kitchen’ that National audience is investigating. ‘Wickr me’ is a messaging application that politicians, businessmen and police they use to make their conversations impossible to reveal. Something that also makes it difficult for agents to work when they are in the middle of an investigation.
The application ‘Whatsapp’ sends a message to all its users when they start a conversation to warn them that the messages being sent are end-to-end encrypted. This means that they travel encrypted from mobile to mobile and if someone wants to intervene along the way, including the police, you will not be able to.
However, if the security forces manage to physically the mobile the thing changes. From the dump of the phone of the former number two of the Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, the Police has collected 262 pages of conversations of ‘WhatsApp’ of him with other policemen also investigated, as well as with journalists, relatives or workers of the Ministry. But agents do not have access to an important part of the information and that, perhaps, could be decisive for the investigation because these words happened in ‘Wickr me’.
The safest app
‘Wickr’ is not a very popular application in Spain. Its use began to be a little more widespread when in 2012 it was shown at the serie americana ‘Mr. Robot’ about computer security. Not only does it have an end-to-end encryption message, but it also doesn’t keep any data.
While ‘Whatsapp’ collects device ID data, of the user, approximate location or payment information, among others, ‘Wickr me ‘removes all metadata, that is, the context information for each message: the geolocation (where a message was written and sent), the time it was sent and, of course, the photos and videos. Another WhatsApp security “flaw”: the attached documents are not encrypted.
If agents tap into a device, they can retrieve all of Mark Zuckerberg’s network conversations that are deposited in the cloud. Instead, the app used by the former Secretary of State for Security to talk about the most private matters can be programmed to destroy messages automatically from 3 seconds after sending to three days.
Have a very austere and functional design, precisely because it is focused on providing security. Also, it prevents free screen capture. Notify everyone present in the conversation of said capture, its content and the time it was taken.
IMBox, the ‘WhatsApp’ of the police
The National Police, the Civil Guard and some sectors of the Ministry of Defense also use an alternative instant messaging system to talk to each other. IMBox is a communication channel destined to companies or groups of workers so that they have absolute control of their communications. Being a Spanish solution, the service is ‘inhouse’, In other words, the talks do not leave Spain and that implies that they are under control.
When the police want to have access to some conversations, By means of a court order, it could ask the messaging application itself, whatever it is, to let it access a specific communication. What happens is that you are companies usually adhere to the legality of the country in which they are established and, therefore, they ask for the court order to come from their own state.
Video of the day |
|
The coronavirus pandemic adds about 630,000 cases worldwide. |
–
For this you would have to ask a rogatory commission and, sources from the Prosecutor’s Office, acknowledge that this was only requested in cases of terrorism or high risk for people.
Signal, the App that uses the ‘procés’ and Snowden
Of the few times that it has been possible to access a conversation between the politicians who organized the illegal referendum 1-0, it was because the telephoto lens of a television camera allowed to see the screen and not because the police could access the conversations.
He camera from the ‘Ana Rosa’ program caught some messages between the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and the ex-minister Toni Comín: “I suppose you are clear that this is over. Ours have sacrificed us. At least me ”.
These messages occurred in the ‘Signal’ app, another messaging service with security conditions very similar to those of ‘Wickr me’. The digital tool served to coordinate the referendum and to establish direct and totally private communication channels with the Puigdemont.
The encryption it uses’Signal ‘for his messages was the one that’ WhatsApp ‘ -which initially did not have any security method- decided to implement a few years ago. Edward Snowden himself said in 2015 that he used this app.
– .
