The State of Texas has filed a major lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc. and its subsidiary WhatsApp, LLC, accusing the tech giants of violating state consumer protection laws by secretly accessing users’ private messages while publicly promising absolute encryption.
The lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the 71st Judicial District Court of Harrison County, alleges that the companies have actively misled millions of Texans regarding the security of the world’s most popular messaging app.
According to the state’s petition, WhatsApp has systematically built its massive global user base of over 3 billion people on the explicit promise that “not even WhatsApp can see” personal messages, photos, or calls. The state points directly to sworn 2018 congressional testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who told the U.S. Senate that “we do not see any of the content in WhatsApp, it’s fully encrypted.”
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The lawsuit contends these statements are completely false, stating that Meta and WhatsApp “store, maintain access to, and use” purportedly encrypted communications. The state’s petition points to a recent federal investigation where a Commerce Department Export Enforcement agent concluded that “there is no limit to the type of WhatsApp message that can be viewed by Meta.”
The legal filing reveals that Meta utilizes a “tiered permissions system” that allows employees and overseas contractors, including content moderators, to view message content in an unencrypted format. This directly contradicts the prominent notice displayed at the top of every single WhatsApp chat, which states that no one outside the conversation can read them.
“Texans deserve to know whether their private communications are indeed truly private,” Attorney General Paxton said in a statement accompanying the filing. “WhatsApp markets its services as secure and encrypted, but it does not deliver on those promises. I am suing to protect Texans’ privacy and ensure that WhatsApp by Meta does not mislead Texans by unlawfully accessing private conversations and data.”
The lawsuit details a broader corporate pattern of privacy violations at Meta, citing historical data scandals, billions of dollars in previous regulatory fines from the Federal Trade Commission and European regulators, and recent layoffs within the company’s internal privacy compliance teams.
Texas is bringing the enforcement action under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA). The state is seeking a permanent injunction to block Meta from accessing Texas users’ communications without explicit consent, as well as civil penalties of $10,000 per violation.
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