Published On 4/29/2026
The US Department of Commerce suddenly and secretly closed an investigation it was conducting into allegations regarding secure encryption standards in WhatsApp, after it reached a conclusion confirming that “Meta” had access to encrypted messages on the platform, according to a report by the American Bloomberg Agency.
The investigation conducted by the Ministry’s Bureau of Industry and Security continued for 10 months beginning in 2025, according to statements by the agent who was responsible for the investigation and refused to disclose his name to Bloomberg.
Before the investigation ended abruptly, the investigator in charge communicated via email with more than a dozen separate US federal agencies, according to the Bloomberg report, and conveyed to them the findings of his investigation.
The investigator described what Meta and its executives are doing with encrypted WhatsApp messages in one of his messages to federal agencies as a clear and explicit violation of the civil and criminal rights of users, without referring to the laws that the company violated, according to the agency’s report.
He added, “There are no restrictions on the WhatsApp messages that Meta can view,” justifying this matter – according to Bloomberg – by the fact that the company stores, retains and views all messages sent through its services, noting that some external collaborators with Meta are able to access these messages.
It should be noted that WhatsApp confirms that its messages are fully encrypted between both parties of the conversation, which requires that no one can see the messages except the two parties concerned, as they are the only ones who have their encryption keys.
The Bloomberg report indicates that the suspension of the investigation was very sudden and unexpected, which raises pivotal questions about its fate and the intentions of the US government.
For its part, Meta has completely denied these allegations since they appeared, and its official position of denial continued even after the Bloomberg report appeared, as the company’s official spokesman described it as a clear lie.
Spokesman Andy Stone added: “Months ago, the Bureau of Industry and Security disavowed this alleged investigation, describing its employee’s allegations as baseless, and stressing that the agency is not investigating WhatsApp or Meta for violations of export laws.”
Why did the investigation start in the first place?
According to Bloomberg, the investigation into the encryption mechanism used in WhatsApp began after a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower appeared to the Securities and Exchange Commission, along with another case against Meta for the same matter. These complaints coincided with a case between Meta and the Israeli spy company NSO, the developer of the Pegasus software that penetrates WhatsApp.
At that time, Meta completely denied the accusations and explained that it was one of the mechanisms that NSO used to support its case and confirm that the company did not greatly care about protecting users’ data and messages, according to a report published by the British newspaper “The Guardian” at the time.
But the law firm that filed the case against Meta due to WhatsApp encryption confirmed that its clients come from several countries in the world, including Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
For his part, Stephen Murdoch, professor of security engineering at the University of London, believes that the lawsuit against Meta is strange and relies mainly on anonymous leaks, but if Meta was really reading WhatsApp messages, then such a matter would have been revealed to the public years ago and would have completely destroyed the company, from his point of view.
The CEO of “X” Company, Elon Musk, and the CEO of the encrypted chat platform “Telegram”, Pavel Durov, had previously criticized the encryption mechanisms in “WhatsApp,” according to a report from the American technical website “Cyber News”.
What does that mean for us?
If “Meta” is able to read and view all “WhatsApp” messages of all kinds, this would mean a major breach of privacy on an unprecedented global level, as the platform currently has more than two billion users around the world, and such a matter will place “Meta” in a critical position economically, politically, and technically, because it will need to defend all of its services that will be subject to the accusation.
This matter – if true – will also hinder the company’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence models and integrate them with its platforms, which efforts are met with widespread doubts and concerns about privacy, access to user data, and training artificial intelligence models on it.
It should be noted that Meta was part of a scandal that shook the world years ago related to the US elections in 2018, a scandal that was known internationally as the “Cambridge Analytica scandal,” in reference to the company that helped Facebook at the time analyze user data.
