The Texas Attorney General has launched a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the company's messaging app WhatsApp does not provide the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) it claims to offer. Since at least 2016, WhatsApp has maintained that messages are fully encrypted on both sender and receiver devices, ensuring only the intended recipient can read them.

In sworn testimony before US Senate committees in 2018, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated unequivocally: 'Facebook systems do not see the content of messages being transferred over WhatsApp.' However, Texas AG attorneys argue that Meta has access to unencrypted contents of WhatsApp messages and are suing to prevent further misrepresentations about privacy.

The complaint, filed on Thursday, highlights concerns over users' privacy. The attorney general's office asserts: 'All users were entitled to believe their communications were private when WhatsApp and Meta unequivocally and repeatedly promised that no one—not even WhatsApp and Meta—can access their messages.'

In a statement, Meta dismissed the allegations as baseless and vowed to contest the lawsuit in court. The only evidence cited for the claims is an article by Bloomberg reporting that the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security abruptly closed an investigation into similar allegations shortly after one of its agents sent preliminary findings.

The legal battle underscores the ongoing tension between corporate transparency and user privacy, as companies like Meta are increasingly under scrutiny over their claims about data security in a digital age where trust is often thin on the ground.