Re: They'll never get it.
They're attempting to weasel around the terminology a bit.
What they're asking for isn't *technically* breaking the encryption. They want the ability to insert an unauthorised (by the victim... sorry, target) user into a conversation so that the software on the devices of the parties encrypts a second copy of the message using the public key of the eavesdropper and sends it on to them.
No encryption has been broken there. So technically they're not breaking encryption and (they hope) can wave away such foolish things as maths which might be used to argue against them.
But, at the same time they're completely ignoring the issues with that:
- I'd not use any application which had the ability to do that.
- You need the end-users device to "know" about (but not display) the ghost user, so that it knows to encrypt for the peeler. Which means someone will figure out a way to detect the presence of the eavesdropper
- The people they claim to care about catching will move onto a technology that isn't affected whilst we all get digitally raped by the rampant privacy abuse of our Government and it's organs
- Eventually, it'll leak just how much the ability was misused, the industry will refuse to co-operate and we'll be back where we are now, having fucked up a lot of lives along the way
They *are* though, going to keep pushing until they get what they want. They don't need 100% coverage, just to take a few big scalps so that most of the population are using at least one affected app.