SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – A federal judge on Friday discharged claims against Meta by a class of users who say they had evidence from anonymous whistleblowers that the tech giant lied about its promise that all WhatsApp communications are private and fully encrypted.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ruled that there was not enough information in the complaint about the whistleblowers’ knowledge base for the claims to advance at this stage.
“Although plaintiffs do not have to identify whistleblowers to state a credible basis for their claims, they must provide some facts that support an inference that the whistleblowers have firsthand knowledge or some other credible basis for their allegations,” wrote nominee Joe Biden.
Lin gave the plaintiffs until August 13 to file an amended complaint.
WhatsApp, which was acquired by Meta in 2014, is a widely used social media platform that allows users to send messages and make voice and video calls over the Internet.
WhatsApp advertises that it uses end-to-end encryption to keep user communications private from all but the senders and receivers of the messages, and that no one else – including WhatsApp itself – can view user communications.
The plaintiffs, WhatsApp users living around the world, unsuspecting Meta on behalf of a proposed class in January, alleging that “intrepid whistleblowers” had provided them with evidence that WhatsApp and Meta have access to most of the supposedly private communications of users.
To access users’ messages, they claimed that Meta employees only need to send a “task” to a Meta engineer explaining that they need to access WhatsApp messages for their work. Then, they say, Meta’s engineering team will grant the employee access “often without any review at all,” allowing the employee to pull any user’s WhatsApp messages based on the user’s ID number.
The plaintiffs further allege that Meta employees also had access to the communications of high-profile WhatsApp users, such as celebrities, politicians and Meta employees; however, accessing their accounts will flag an employee for investigation.
“The significance of Meta and WhatsApp’s violation of user privacy and trust cannot be overstated,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint.
The plaintiffs brought a total of ten claims against Meta, including violation of the Federal Answers Act, the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and the California Invasion of Privacy Act, as well as state invasion of privacy, breach of contract, and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims.
Meta moved to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims and sought sanctions, arguing that the complaint is “factually without merit.”
In the 19-page opinion, Lin threw out several “fraud-based” claims because they failed to meet the requirements for fraud, specifically the “who, what, when, where and how” of the alleged misconduct.
The plaintiffs’ Wiretapping Act claim was dismissed because the plaintiffs failed to provide evidence that Meta could access users’ encrypted WhatsApp communications beyond what “whistleblowers have explained here,” the judge wrote.
“Where there are essentially no other non-conclusive factual allegations that provide a basis for plaintiffs’ assertions about defendants’ ability to access user messages, the complaint must set forth some basic facts about how each whistleblower knows what he has described, and if the knowledge is not first-hand, why it is plausible to state otherwise.”
The other surviving non-fraud claims were dismissed because Lin said the plaintiffs failed to allege that the defendants breached their promises about the privacy of WhatsApp messages, received and wrongfully retained a benefit at their expense, or received users’ messages in a manner that constituted theft.
However, Lin denied Meta’s motion for sanctions, finding that Meta’s evidence that he could not access the encrypted messages did not “conclusively rule out the possibility that the whistleblowers’ allegations are true.”
A WhatsApp spokesperson praised the decision, telling Courthouse News that the lawsuit “has always been a complete work of fiction.”
“We are pleased that in dismissing it, the judge found that the plaintiffs did not provide sufficient facts or information. Any claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,” they said.
A representative for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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