This has nothing to do with RCS from what I read on the article. It looks like the UK wants to be able to tell companies to disable security features such as End to End Encryption so that they can view the messages.
Isn't WhatsApp super popular in the EU as a whole? Like to the point where EVERYONE uses it? What does the UK have to say about that? It's apparently E2EE, right?
But although it's popular it's nowhere near everyone using it.. I have about 2 whatsapp contacts and one of those is a mailing list. Most people I know use FB messenger. A few signal.. It really depends on who your friend groups are..
Not necessarily. Google has implemented E2EE in their implementation, but it only works if both parties are using Google Messages. It's not a standard part of the spec.
I too could manually encrypt data and send it via regular old sms. That would require the other party to know of and make use of extra tools to be able to read and reply. If not, then they might not be able to read the message, or worse, reply in plaintext. That's what google is doing with rcs. Rcs is not encrypted. the google app encrypts the data and sends it "unencrypted" over rcs. From rcs' point of view it looks like "this user is trying to send random junk.... who am I to judge?"