Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 07 2019, @01:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-don't-get-it dept.

The broken record: Why Barr's call against end-to-end encryption is nuts

US Attorney General William Barr is leading a charge to press Facebook and other Internet services to terminate end-to-end encryption efforts—this time in the name of fighting child pornography. Barr, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, and United Kingdom Secretary of State Priti Patel yesterday asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hold off on plans to implement end-to-end encryption across all Facebook Messenger services "without including a means for lawful access to the content of communications to protect our citizens."

The open letter comes months after Barr said in a speech that "warrant-proof" cryptography is "extinguishing the ability of law enforcement to obtain evidence essential to detecting and investigating crimes" and allowing "criminals to operate with impunity, hiding their activities under an impenetrable cloak of secrecy." The new message echoes a joint communiqué issued by the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (the "Five Eyes") from July, which stated:

...it is imperative that all sectors of the digital industry including Internet Service Providers, device manufacturers and others to continue to consider the impacts to the safety of children, including those who are at risk of exploitation, when developing their systems and services. In particular, encryption must not be allowed to conceal or facilitate the exploitation of children.

Facebook encryption threatens public safety, say ministers

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel and counterparts in the US and Australia have sent an open letter to Facebook calling on it to rethink its plans to encrypt all messages on its platforms. The policy threatens "lives and the safety of our children", they said. They said it could hamper international efforts to grant law enforcers faster access to private messages on social media, as agreed between the UK and US.

Facebook said "people have the right to have a private conversation online." The head of Facebook-owned WhatsApp Will Cathcart had previously posted on Hacker News: "End-to-end encryption protects that right for over a billion people every day."

Also at NYT.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @08:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @08:01PM (#903835)

    Go for it.