Attorney General Pressures Facebook To Delay End-To-End Encryption, Citing Child Abuse Concerns

Attorney General Pressures Facebook To Delay End-To-End Encryption, Citing Child Abuse Concerns

Law enforcement are increasingly worried about the possibility of end-to-end encryption, which does not provide police with a way to access communications between potential suspects.

In an effort to impede Facebook’s plans to deploy end-to-end encryption for its messaging services, government officials from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia published an open letter last week pushing CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hold off on implementing encryption. 

BuzzFeed News published a draft of the letter, dated Oct. 4, that was signed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan and the top homeland security officials in the UK and Australia, Priti Patel and Peter Dutton. 

While Barr has previously argued that end-to-end encryption would prevent law enforcement officers from properly investigating terrorist threats, the officials have now zoned in on how encryption can make it more difficult to catch and prosecute child sexual exploitation. 

“Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content, even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes,” the letter reads. “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 calls on Facebook and other tech companies to include methods for law enforcement to “obtain lawful access” to content in a readable and usable format; consult with governments about how this ability would influence design decisions; and not implement encryption changes until the company has ensured the “safety” functions are fully tested and operational. 

“As you have recognised, it is critical to get this right for the future of the internet,” the letter concludes. “Children’s safety and law enforcement’s ability to bring criminals to justice must not be the ultimate cost of Facebook taking forward these proposals.”

Tech companies and security experts have consistently argued that building “backdoors,” or ways to decrypt messages from outside of the communication, makes it more difficult to protect the encrypted communication from hackers or foreign governments. 

In its response to criticism from Barr and more recently FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Facebook spokesman said that the company is consulting with child safety experts, governments and companies to make sure encryption is safe. 

“End-to-end encryption already protects the messages of over a billion people every day,” the statement reads. “It is increasingly used across the communications industry and in many other important sectors of the economy.” 

The statement directly countered Barr’s request: “We strongly oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere.”

 

About the Author

Haley Samsel is an Associate Content Editor for the Infrastructure Solutions Group at 1105 Media.

Featured

  • Allegion, Comfort Technologies Implement Mobile Credentials at the Artisan Apartment Homes in Florida

    Artisan Apartment Homes, a luxury apartment complex in Dunedin, Florida, recently transitioned from mechanical keys to electronic locks and centralized system software with support from Allegion US, a leading provider of security solutions, technology and services, and Florida-based Comfort Technologies, which specializes in deploying multifamily access control, IoT devices and software management solutions. Read Now

  • Mall of America Deploys AI-Powered Analytics to Enhance Parking Intelligence

    Mall of America®, the largest shopping and entertainment complex in North America, announced an expansion of its ongoing partnership with Axis Communications to deploy cutting-edge car-counting video analytics across more than a dozen locations. With this expansion, Mall of America (MOA) has boosted operational efficiency, improved safety and security, and enabled more informed decision-making around employee scheduling and streamlining transportation for large events. Read Now

  • Security Industry Association Launches New “askSIA” AI Tool

    The Security Industry Association (SIA) has unveiled a brand-new SIA member benefit – askSIA, a conversational AI agent designed to help users get the most out of their SIA membership, easily access SIA resources and find the latest information on SIA’s training and courses, reports and publications, events, certification offerings and more. SIA members can easily find askSIA by visiting the SIA homepage or looking for the askSIA icon in the top left of webpages. Read Now

    • Industry Events
  • Industry Embraces Mobile Access, Biometrics and AI

    A combination of evolving workplace dynamics, technology innovation and new user expectations is changing how people enter and interact with physical spaces. Access control is at the heart of these changes. Combined with biometrics and AI, mobile access control has become increasingly crucial for deploying entry solutions that are seamless, secure and adaptive to user needs. Read Now

  • Sustainable Video Solution Delivered for Landmark City of London Office Development

    An advanced, end-to-end video solution from IDIS, with a focus on reducing waste and costs, has helped a major office development in the City of London align its security with sustainability objectives. Read Now

New Products

  • A8V MIND

    A8V MIND

    Hexagon’s Geosystems presents a portable version of its Accur8vision detection system. A rugged all-in-one solution, the A8V MIND (Mobile Intrusion Detection) is designed to provide flexible protection of critical outdoor infrastructure and objects. Hexagon’s Accur8vision is a volumetric detection system that employs LiDAR technology to safeguard entire areas. Whenever it detects movement in a specified zone, it automatically differentiates a threat from a nonthreat, and immediately notifies security staff if necessary. Person detection is carried out within a radius of 80 meters from this device. Connected remotely via a portable computer device, it enables remote surveillance and does not depend on security staff patrolling the area.

  • Luma x20

    Luma x20

    Snap One has announced its popular Luma x20 family of surveillance products now offers even greater security and privacy for home and business owners across the globe by giving them full control over integrators’ system access to view live and recorded video. According to Snap One Product Manager Derek Webb, the new “customer handoff” feature provides enhanced user control after initial installation, allowing the owners to have total privacy while also making it easy to reinstate integrator access when maintenance or assistance is required. This new feature is now available to all Luma x20 users globally. “The Luma x20 family of surveillance solutions provides excellent image and audio capture, and with the new customer handoff feature, it now offers absolute privacy for camera feeds and recordings,” Webb said. “With notifications and integrator access controlled through the powerful OvrC remote system management platform, it’s easy for integrators to give their clients full control of their footage and then to get temporary access from the client for any troubleshooting needs.”

  • EasyGate SPT and SPD

    EasyGate SPT SPD

    Security solutions do not have to be ordinary, let alone unattractive. Having renewed their best-selling speed gates, Cominfo has once again demonstrated their Art of Security philosophy in practice — and confirmed their position as an industry-leading manufacturers of premium speed gates and turnstiles.