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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: 3, Touché) by VLM on Tuesday April 06 2021, @12:19PM (6 children)
I thought the leadership over there was themselves the predatory pedos. Kinda like how we have "sniffy" as our prez here. So it seems inconsistent to have one part of the government protecting kids from the other parts of the government.
My guess is using double-plus goodspeak that "protecting" children might mean protecting them from Christianity or western cultural values or anything to the right of Marx. Whereas in the old days protecting would have meant keeping them away from pedos.
Considering that corps and gov have root on all the hardware, I'm not sure what the worry is anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @12:39PM (1 child)
You actually think differnt parts of the government work together... how quaint.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @12:58PM
Ah, a civil servant, I presume?
I once worked at a place where the aims of one government contract were diametrically the opposite to those of a second one, the civil servants administering both were in the same physical office...it never pays to let the pinkie and the index finger of one hand know what either is up to, let alone allowing communication betwixt the old left&right hands..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @03:44PM
We should keep them locked up in Miss Universe changing rooms, that'll keep 'em safe from grabbing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @04:35PM
Clueless you are, defending pedos you did. Hell you shall find.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @08:36PM
"Think of the children!"
"You pervert!"
^ This is the correct response to this rhetoric...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:02AM
MI5 knowingly covered up the activity including interfering with local police investigations in order to protect their blackmail so that they could push for funding expansions between at least the 1980s and 2000s. This behavior, if it stopped, only stopped after the last member of parliament documented in the activities was dead, and there was then a major records purge... 30 years in 1 year and since that time they've claimed nothing of the sort ever happened.
This is ammo box time for the british, whether that ammo is bullets or knives or IRA trained anti-paedoists. It's time to put a stop to it the way that justice is done when justice is committed to injustice.