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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.


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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:15AM (2 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:15AM (#903916) Journal

    When zuckerberg says it, he's trolling

    Zuckerberg and Facebook are irrelevant to me. He can troll all he wants. I'm just cherry picking the good shit for what it's worth. We have the right to private conversations on the network. I make that the focus, not Zuckerberg.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:49PM (1 child)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday October 08 2019, @01:49PM (#904061) Journal
    We don't need anything from Facebook to have private conversations. Same as we don't need anything at all from Facebook or Google. Giving up time wasters like YouTube isn't that hard. Same with stupidity from all the social media platforms.

    You'll have fewer friends, but they were never really friends to begin with, so no love lost.

    --
    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 08 2019, @04:40PM

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday October 08 2019, @04:40PM (#904153) Journal

      Giving up time wasters like YouTube isn't that hard. Same with stupidity from all the social media platforms.

      That is what I have been saying all along. So what's the beef? Ignore them and move on to something important.

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..