Senior government officials are pressuring Facebook to build a backdoor into the end-to-end encryption on its messaging services, giving law enforcement access to communications that are currently locked away with virtually impenetrable security measures.
In a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Attorney General William Barr and Homeland Security Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan will ask the company to back off plans to encrypt the messaging services until it could guarantee law enforcement access to the content of the messages and ensure “there is no reduction to user safety.”
The letter, dated Oct. 4, was also signed by two high-ranking officials from Australia and the United Kingdom. The request was first reported by Buzzfeed News.
“We support strong encryption, which is used by billions of people every day for services such as banking, commerce and communications. We also respect promises made by technology companies to protect users’ data,” officials wrote in the letter. “However ... we must ensure that technology companies protect their users and others affected by their users’ online activities. Security enhancements to the virtual world should not make us more vulnerable in the physical world.”
In recent years, the government has sporadically butted heads with the tech industry over its use of end-to-end encryption, a security scheme that lets users encode digital information so it’s only accessible to intended recipients. Technologists argue the measures are necessary to protect users’ privacy, while law enforcement says it allows criminals to act with impunity.
The most recent bout was sparked by a New York Times report that child predators are ..
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