EFF lawyer joins WhatsApp as privacy policy manager

In an effort to bolster its public credibility in the wake of a very rough time, Facebook is generating a raging former pundit into the fold.

Next month, longtime Electronic Frontier Foundation( EFF) advise Nate Cardozo will join WhatsApp, Facebook’s encrypted chat app. Cardozo most recently held the responsibilities of Senior Information Security Counsel with the EFF where he worked closely with individual organizations on cybersecurity program. As his bio there predicts, Cardozo is” an expert in technology principle and civil liberties” and previously works with private business on privacy public policies that protect user rights.

Cardozo announced the move in a post to Facebook on Tuesday 😛 TAGEND

Personal report!

After six and a half years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation( EFF ), I’ll be leaving following the conclusion of next week. I’m unbelievably sad to be leaving such a great administration and I’ll miss all my fellow members with all my heart.

Where to? Starting 2/19, I’ll be the Privacy Policy Manager for WhatsApp !! I could NOT be more excited.

If you know me at all, you’ll know this isn’t a move I’d impel delicately. After personal privacy beating Facebook’s taken over the last year, I was skeptical very. But the privacy squad I’ll be joining knows me well, and knows exactly how I feel about tech program, privacy, and encrypted messaging. And that’s whom they want at organizing privacy at WhatsApp. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity.

It’s going to be an enormous challenge professionally but I’m ready for it.

Though it also does more cooperative work with major tech fellowships, the EFF regularly notes itself on the opposite side of the ring. Cardozo’s own background reflects that adversarial rapport, and he surely hasn’t minced terms about his new supervisor. In a 2015 op-ed, Cardozo made the claw on the leader about Facebook’s lucrative habit of moving its customers’ every move.

” It’s sinister, but maybe you don’t care enough about a faceless corporation’s data mining to go out of your behavior to protect your privacy, and anyway you don’t have anything to hide ,” Cardozo wrote.” Facebook counts on that; its business framework depends on our collective embarrassment and apathy about privacy .”

Personally, we’d sleep ever so slightly better at night knowing that the person who wrote the sentence” If a business simulate are dependent upon cheat and lethargy, it deserves to fail” is trying a turn on the inside.

The cognitive dissonance of a well-regarded privacy campaigner moving over to Facebook is illustrious, though not without precedent. For all its privacy faults, Facebook does own the more popular digital messaging app in most countries around the world — an app it opts to keep end-to-end encrypted by default( so far, regardless ).

As far as WhatsApp leads, Cardozo’s hiring comes at a critical time: Last week, The New York Times reported Facebook’s intention to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The big change has some its safety and privacy-minded people glad( more end-to-end encryption !) and spate more worried about what else the incorporation will mean.

Leading into the change, Facebook would be smart to hire as many pre-eminent enunciates in online privacy as it can allure. Public review of the company hasn’t faded precisely, but hiring commentators is a straightforward road to build trust in the meantime. For a company not known for public disagreement and open dialogue, Facebook’s commentators may prove a helpful resource if they are able banked for a duty tour behind the large-scale blue line.

Update: Cardozo isn’t alone in performing the permutation from privacy advocacy to Facebook. The busines is also well hired Robyn Greene from the Open Technology Institute. As she announced in a tweet, Greene will focus on law enforcement access and data protection in her new character with Facebook.

Some personal story: After 4.5 amazing times at @OTI working on privacy and security issues, I’m keep moving.

I’m thrilled to share that next week I’ll meet @facebook‘s prodigious squad as a privacy programme overseer on law enforcement agencies access and data protection issues! 1/3

— Robyn Greene (@ Robyn_Greene) January 29, 2019

A ton of parties don’t know that Facebook owns WhatsApp