U.S., allies ask Facebook not to expand encryption on its services

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post



The United States, Britain and Australia are calling on Facebook to halt its plans to deploy strong encryption across all of its messaging apps unless it can provide a way for investigators to see communications in the clear, launching a fresh salvo in a long-running war between Washington and Silicon Valley.

In a letter dated Oct. 4 to Facebook obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. Attorney General William Barr and his foreign counterparts urged Facebook to “enable law enforcement to obtain lawful access to content in a readable and usable format,” arguing that the company’s efforts could prove especially damaging for government investigations into child sexual abuse.

The dispute stems over a March announcement by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who sketched out his vision for a “privacy-focused” future for Facebook and the services under its umbrella, including Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg said the company intends to integrate those services with Facebook’s Messenger app, so users can talk to each other across different apps if they want, while providing “end-to-end” encryption of their chats. Such strong encryption allows only the user and sender to be able to read or hear a conversation’s content.

In doing so, Barr and his colleagues said Facebook “puts our citizens and societies at risk by severely eroding a company’s ability to detect and respond to illegal content and activity, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, terrorism, and foreign adversaries’ attempts to undermine democratic values and institutions.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-allies-ask-facebook-not-to-encrypt-its-messaging-service/2019/10/03/9180d27c-e5f0-11e9-a6e8-8759c5c7f608_story.html

[JonLP24]

1. What did people do before Facebook?

They finally add something for privacy but governments want them to keep it open to make their jobs easier.