Ex- CIA employee and whistle-blower, Edward Snowden warned people about the lack of privacy on Google's recently launched messaging app Allo, and advised them not to use it.
Allo launched yesterday, as the first platform to be integrated with Google's new intelligent agent, Google Assistant. Google had announced at the I/O conference earlier this year that Allo would not be saving messages on its own servers, but that is not the case with the final application.
The reason for saving the communications in Google servers is apparently to improve Google Assistant, which is a win for machine learning, but a loss for privacy. However, upon request, Google can make the data available to law enforcement agencies. These concerns over security prompted Snowden to tweet out a warning against using the newly launched app.
He defined it as "A Google app that records every message you ever send and makes it available to police upon request." He further went ahead and suggested using apps such as Signal for communication purposes instead.
What is #Allo? A Google app that records every message you ever send and makes it available to police upon request. https://t.co/EdPRC0G7Py— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 21, 2016
In seriousness, this is a complex question for which there is no one right answer. But relative to #Allo, Signal is safer for normal users.— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 21, 2016
The danger that Snowden is trying to point out here is that while Google may be officially claiming to log the chats to improve its own Artificial Intelligence offerings, the choice was made knowing that the private communications would be made available to law enforcement agencies upon request. Allo works as a surrogate mass surveillance system, because Google simply hands over user data when enforcement agencies request it.
Snowden had previously asked for the boycott of Allo in May. He said that the decision taken by Google to disable end-to-end encryption by default in Allo was 'dangerous' and added "Avoid it for now."
Google's decision to disable end-to-end encryption by default in its new #Allo chat app is dangerous, and makes it unsafe. Avoid it for now.— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 19, 2016
It is worth noting that the app still has an incognito mode, which allows end-to-end encryption on messages sent through the app. The messages sent through incognito are not stored by the company. There is also a timer that allows destruction of sent messages in as little as five seconds. A messaging client such as WhatsApp that by default does not save messages in its own servers is a more secure option, as there is no data saved to comply with requests by law enforcement agencies.
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