This article is completely overblown.
The short of it is that WhatsApp does not have protections against internet traffic analysis at the scale of a nation state, so a national government can analyze internet traffic and determine with some degree of accuracy who received the packets that you sent. Some WhatsApp employees have speculated that this might be being used by Israel to choose targets in Gaza, but it sounds like we have zero evidence that this is actually the case.
If you're a dissident, then you should be aware that just because the contents of your messages are encrypted that doesn't mean the source and destination can't be determined.
If you're a WhatsApp employee who cares about protecting dissidents, then it would be worth exploring what WhatsApp can do to mitigate this risk.
But if you're a random citizen in a stable country, this is not evidence of bad behavior on WhatsApp's part or of them failing to do enough to live up to their promises. This kind of "vulnerability" is extremely hard to defend against, and while it's admirable that some WhatsApp employees are lobbying internally to take it on, it's not newsworthy that they haven't solved it yet.
The short of it is that WhatsApp does not have protections against internet traffic analysis at the scale of a nation state, so a national government can analyze internet traffic and determine with some degree of accuracy who received the packets that you sent. Some WhatsApp employees have speculated that this might be being used by Israel to choose targets in Gaza, but it sounds like we have zero evidence that this is actually the case.
If you're a dissident, then you should be aware that just because the contents of your messages are encrypted that doesn't mean the source and destination can't be determined.
If you're a WhatsApp employee who cares about protecting dissidents, then it would be worth exploring what WhatsApp can do to mitigate this risk.
But if you're a random citizen in a stable country, this is not evidence of bad behavior on WhatsApp's part or of them failing to do enough to live up to their promises. This kind of "vulnerability" is extremely hard to defend against, and while it's admirable that some WhatsApp employees are lobbying internally to take it on, it's not newsworthy that they haven't solved it yet.