First comes the Attorney General, but then you come.

There's a huge media fuss over Google and WhatsApp saying they're preserving messages from the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz. Hands are rubbed in anticipation. Saliva is secreted. Some people toy with the idea of overthrowing the government if these communications become public. Such euphoria is curious, because if it's confirmed that these communications can be recovered and read, then the democratic problem that befalls us is significant. Because, on WhatsApp's website, when it explains the service's privacy policies, you can read: "No one outside the chat, not even WhatsApp, can read, listen to, or share them. This happens because, thanks to end-to-end encryption, messages are secured with a lock, and only you and the recipient can access them." Come on, they should have said "only you, the recipient, and law enforcement agencies that request it, like the UCO."

When the scandal uncovered by Snowden, revealing massive NSA spying, broke, it became clear that big tech companies, despite their rhetoric about protecting privacy, were willing to open back doors so authorities could snoop around at will. Now, we also have Mark Zuckerberg, who has begun an unabashed maneuver to cozy up to Trump and everything he represents. If WhatsApp now reveals that messages are being saved and, moreover, decryptable, it will become clear that social media, far from becoming the empowering and democratizing tool they promised to be, will increasingly become arms of power, with an unprecedented capacity to spy on citizens. Opening this door for the Attorney General's case—which, indeed, stinks—is a dangerous precedent that should alert any anonymous user.