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The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
The UK is planning a new attack on end-to-end encryption, with the Home Office set to spearhead efforts designed to discourage Facebook from further rolling out the technology to its messaging apps.
Home Secretary Priti Patel is planning to deliver a keynote speech at a child protection charity's event focused on exposing the perceived ills of end-to-end encryption and asking for stricter regulation of the technology. At the same time a new report will say that technology companies need to do more to protect children online.
[...] The Home Office's move comes as Facebook plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across all its messaging platforms—including Messenger and Instagram—which has sparked a fierce debate in the UK and elsewhere over the supposed risks the technology poses to children.
[...] An early draft of the report, seen by WIRED, says that increased usage of end-to-end encryption would protect adults' privacy at the expense of children's safety, and that any strategy adopted by technology companies to mitigate the effect of end-to-end encryption will "almost certainly be less effective than the current ability to scan for harmful content."
The report also suggests that the government devise regulation "expressly targeting encryption", in order to prevent technology companies from "engineer[ing] away" their ability to police illegal communications.[...]
[...] Since Facebook's announcement on the extension of end-to-end encryption in 2019, Patel has grown increasingly impatient and vocal about the dangers of the technology—publicly calling on Facebook to "halt plans for end-to-end encryption", and bringing up the subject in meetings with her US counterparts and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of English-speaking countries.
[...] Jim Killock, executive director at digital rights organization Open Rights Group, says he is "worried that the Home Office will be considering using a secret order (TCN) to force Facebook to limit or circumvent their encryption."
"Facebook would be gagged from saying anything," Killock adds. Although the action would be targeted to Facebook only, he thinks that such a move would set a precedent.
[...] Company executives have previously admitted that the increased rollout of end-to-end encryption will reduce the amount of child abuse reports it makes to industry monitoring groups.
"Its full rollout on our messaging services is a long-term project and we are building strong safety measures into our plans," the spokesperson added.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday April 06 2021, @09:11AM (2 children)
Parents can read their kids encrypted messages because the parents bought the phone and can easily enough take physical possession of it.
Without encryption, random perverts can read children's messages to their friends and learn what they need to target a victim.
What the UK government is really worried about is not being able to read messages between Scottish people talking about splitting off and re-joining the EU. Or perhaps scofflaws trying to acquire a wheel of unpasteurized cheese.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Tuesday April 06 2021, @12:10PM
Big Brother (GCHQ) doesn't want you to have any privacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ [wikipedia.org]
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @12:44PM
Funny you should say that...
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=42851&commentsort=0&mode=threadtos&threshold=-1&highlightthresh=-1&page=1&cid=1133834#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Though you can stuff the '...and re-joining the EU' part where the sun don't shine...
Besides, the SNP are in cosy with MI5 and GCHQ of late, it's the readers of a number of 'dissident' independence (but not SNP) supporting blogs they're after...the SNP are all about corruption, genderwoo & crypto-fascism these days rather than the 'I' word..