Meta Platforms Inc (META)

[tw0122]

WhatsApp was ordered by a US government agency to spy on several foreign nationals, even though the agency had no evidence the users had committed a crime or even knew their names.

A recently unsealed search warrant from November 2021 shows that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had ordered the Facebook-owned communications service to monitor seven users reportedly located in China and Macau.

“The warrant reveals the DEA didn’t know the identities of any of the targets, but told WhatsApp to monitor the IP addresses and numbers with which the targeted users were communicating, as well as when and how they were using the app,” security and privacy reporter Thomas Brewster wrote for Forbes.

Forbes also discovered that WhatsApp had previously been ordered to monitor four users in Mexico – demonstrating again that the US government’s Big Tech surveillance operations go far beyond the country’s borders.

A leaked document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last year showed that WhatsApp was one of the most willing messenger services to provide data to US authorities.