FBI wants data access to encrypting or data-destroying instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Kik, Wickr, and Surespot that could be used by terrorists
Brian Bennett / Los Angeles Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
This FBI push lands five months after the British Prime Minister threatened to ban encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and iMessage if security agencies cannot read them — the same argument, now from Washington, aimed at a named list of apps: WhatsApp, Kik, Wickr, and Surespot. The FBI frames the target as both encryption and data-destroying design, meaning ephemeral-messaging startups are in scope alongside the giants.
What makes the moment consequential is where the industry went next: rather than conceding access, the Apple/FBI standoff pushed Facebook, Google, Snapchat toward more encryption, with WhatsApp adding encrypted voice calls within weeks. By late 2017, FBI Director Christopher Wray reported agents could not unlock over half the mobile devices they tried to open — evidence that the access gap the FBI flagged here widened rather than closed.
First-order effects
- Small messaging firms built around disappearing data — Wickr and Surespot among those named — face direct legal and political pressure to redesign products whose core feature is exactly what the FBI wants eliminated.
- WhatsApp, already under scrutiny from the UK ban debate, becomes the highest-profile test case for whether a major consumer platform will build government access into an encrypted service.
Second-order effects
- Instead of deterring encryption, the pressure accelerates it: Facebook, Google, and Snapchat respond by planning stronger user-data encryption, treating privacy as competitive differentiation against the government's demands.
- The FBI's parallel iPhone case reveals the real objective per outside experts — not cracking one device but setting a warrant-based legal precedent that would normalize compelled access to phone data broadly.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry and intelligence community settle into a durable 'going dark' standoff: platforms defaulting to end-to-end encryption while agencies escalate requests for statutory access — with Wray's later disclosure that over 6,900 devices resisted unlocking showing the technical gap outpacing any negotiated fix.
- Encryption policy shifts from a US-UK bilateral pressure campaign toward a global regulatory question, since banning or backdooring apps used worldwide requires coordination no single government can impose alone.
The trend: Consumer messaging is defaulting to strong encryption even as Western security agencies formalize demands for lawful access, making the FBI-vs-platforms conflict a recurring fixture of tech policy.