Governments Urge Facebook To Create Backdoor Access To Encrypted Messages
The US Attorney General, along with officials from the United Kingdom and Australia,are asking Facebook to delay plans for end-to-end encryption across its messaging services.
The open letter, dated 4 October, is jointly signed by the UK’s home secretary, Priti Patel (pictured) the US attorney general, William Barr, the US acting secretary of homeland security and the Australian minister for home affairs.
The letter calls on Facebook to prioritise public safety in designing its encryption by enabling law enforcement to gain access to illegal content in a manageable format and by consulting with governments ahead of time to ensure the changes will allow this access.
While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism-related content through its own systems, it also notes that "mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children."
"Risks to public safety from Facebook’s proposals are exacerbated in the context of a single platform that would combine inaccessible messaging services with open profiles, providing unique routes for prospective offenders to identify and groom our children," the letter reads.
It will call on Facebook not to “proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety and without including a means for lawful access to the content of communications to protect our citizens”.
The US and UK announced the signing of a “world-first” data access agreement that will allow law enforcement agencies to demand certain data directly from the other country’s tech firms without going through their governments first. The agreement is designed to facilitate investigations related to terrorism, child abuse and exploitation, and other serious crimes. The draft open letter was first reported by BuzzFeed. The governments’ request will reignite a longstanding debate over how to balance privacy with public safety.
Zuckerberg defended his decision to encrypt the company’s messaging services despite concerns about its impact on child exploitation and other criminal activity.
Speaking Thursday 3rd October in a live-streamed version of the company’s weekly internal Q&A session, said child exploitation risks weighed “most heavily” on him when he was making the decision and pledged steps to minimise harm.
Also on Thursday, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement: “We strongly oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere.”
What are Facebook’s planned changes?
Facebook’s messaging app WhatsApp already employs end-to-end encryption, shielding the content of its 1.5bn users’ messages from the company itself. In March 2019, Zuckerberg announced plans to integrate Facebook’s other messaging apps, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, with WhatsApp and incorporate end-to-end encryption across the entire service.
Facebook’s move to expand the use of encryption followed a year in which the company came under global criticism for its failure to protect the data of its users, and it was branded as a pivot toward a “privacy-focused communications platform”.
But law enforcement agencies have long looked askance at encrypted communications, which they argue protect criminals and terrorists while stymying investigators.
The letter specifically focuses on the threat of child sexual exploitation and abuse, noting that Facebook’s combination of encrypted messaging and open profiles could provide “unique routes for prospective offenders to identify and groom our children”.
“In 2018, Facebook made 16.8 million reports to the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, more than 90% of the 18.4 million total reports that year,” the letter states. “NCMEC estimates that 70% of Facebook’s reporting, 12 million reports globally, would be lost [if Facebook implements encryption as planned].”
Privacy v Public Safety
The letter asserts that the governments “support strong encryption” while also demanding “a means for lawful access to the content of communications”, an apparent reference to a so-called “backdoor” into the encrypted communications.
Governments have often proposed such backdoors as a compromise measure, but some security experts argue that it is impossible to provide limited access to encrypted communication without weakening privacy overall.
Privacy advocates have pushed back on the idea that a government backdoor was needed to keep people safe.
“When a door opens for the United States, Australia, or Britain, it also opens for North Korea, Iran, and hackers that want to steal our information,” said Neema Singh Guliani, the senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“Companies should resist these repeated attempts to weaken encryption that reliably protects consumers’ sensitive data from identity thieves, credit card fraud, and human rights abusers.”
The ex-NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, now safely in exile in Moscow, criticised the governments’ request on Twitter, “If Facebook agrees, it may be the largest overnight violation of privacy in history.”
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