{"id":48182,"date":"2022-08-23T13:22:59","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T13:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/33761\/Priti-Patel-Urges-Meta-To-Give-Up-On-End-To-End-Encryption-Plans.html"},"modified":"2022-08-23T13:22:59","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T13:22:59","slug":"priti-patel-urges-meta-to-give-up-on-end-to-end-encryption-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/priti-patel-urges-meta-to-give-up-on-end-to-end-encryption-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Priti Patel Urges Meta To Give Up On End-To-End Encryption Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Priti Patel has hit out at Facebook\u2019s plans to encrypt direct messages, even as the company is facing criticism in the US for failing to protect the privacy of women seeking abortions.<\/p>\n

The UK home secretary has urged Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to reconsider its intentions to apply \u201cend-to-end encryption\u201d to direct messages sent from Messenger and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The technology, already enabled on WhatsApp, prevents anyone other than the sender and recipient of a message from accessing its contents \u2013 including Facebook<\/a> itself, as well as law enforcement and state security agencies.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Telegraph<\/a>, Patel warned that the feature could limit the ability of police to investigate and prevent child abuse<\/a>. \u201cParents need to know that their kids will be safe online. The consequences of inadequate protections \u2013 especially for end-to-end encrypted social media platforms \u2013 would be catastrophic,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cA great many child predators use social media platforms such as Facebook to discover, target and sexually abuse children. These protections need to be in place before end-to-end encryption is rolled out around the world. Child safety must never be an afterthought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s comments were prompted by an announcement earlier this month that Facebook would be moving ahead with plans to test the change. Although the company said the plans for the test had been in place for a long time, it announced the decision shortly after it came under intense criticism for handing over to police the direct messages of a 17-year-old accused of having an illegal abortion in Nebraska.<\/p>\n

Facebook says it did not know that the police were investigating an abortion when it handed over the data, but US pro-choice groups lambasted the company\u2019s cooperation with investigators.<\/p>\n

At Netroots Nation, an American gathering of leftwing groups, activists postered the company\u2019s stand with signs saying \u201cFacebook isn\u2019t free\u201d and \u201cFix Facebook now\u201d, prompting the company to leave the booth unstaffed for the second day of the conference.<\/p>\n

With end-to-end encryption enabled, the company would have been unable to hand the data to the police, even if they were in possession of a legally binding search warrant. But it would also be unable to monitor communications between users for other reasons, such as to find and report child abuse imagery being shared in direct messages.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Facebook alone found and reported 22m pieces of child abuse imagery to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, a US nonprofit that coordinates responses to child abuse online. Instagram<\/a> reported an additional 3.3m, and there are fears among activists that end-to-end encryption could bring those numbers plummeting down, representing many millions of instances of sharing of child abuse imagery disappearing from view.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeta\u2019s announcement that they are testing default end-to-end encryption before ensuring effective child safety mitigations are in place will pose an immediate risk to children,\u201d Andy Burrows, NSPCC head of child safety online policy, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivate messaging is the frontline of child sexual abuse online and this will start to blindfold the company, meaning less child abuse will be detected.\u201d<\/p>\n

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