Meta, Facebook’s owner, has reacted angrily to a government campaign critical of the company’s plans to encrypt messages.
Messages protected with end-to-end encryption could only be read by the sender and recipient.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, said encryption could not come at the expense of children’s protection, despite concerns that it could be used to conceal child abuse.
According to Meta, encryption shields users from invasions of privacy.
“We don’t believe people want us reading their private messages,” the company stated.
“The vast majority of Britons already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters, and criminals,” the report continued.
In July, Ms Braverman expressed her concerns to Meta in a letter co-signed by technological professionals, law enforcement, survivors, and prominent child safety groups.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” she stated on Wednesday. They must create adequate protections to go along with their intentions for end-to-end encryption.”
This is something Meta disagrees with. According to the BBC, the tech firm claims to have provided that information in July. Much of that material is already available online.
Meta stated that it has spent the previous five years creating strong security procedures to prevent, detect, and battle misuse while protecting online security.
“As we roll out end-to-end encryption, we expect to continue providing more reports to law enforcement than our peers as a result of our industry-leading work on keeping people safe,” the company stated.
According to the home secretary, the measures mean that hundreds of child offenders could avoid punishment.
According to James Babbage, the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) head of general threats, if the platform implements end-to-end encryption, it will “massively reduce our collective ability” to protect minors.
“We are not requesting new or additional law enforcement access; we simply request that Meta continue to work with us to identify and prevent abuse,” he said.
In May, Security Minister Tom Tugendhat hinted at the new campaign in a speech.
At the time, he blamed Mark Zuckerberg for the proposal, calling it an “extraordinary moral choice” to increase encryption.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, has stated that by the end of the year, it will implement end-to-end encryption, also known as E2EE, to all Facebook Messenger conversations by default.
The business already owns the encrypted messaging software WhatsApp. Encryption is also used by other platforms, such as Signal and Apple’s iMessage. All of these platforms have criticized provisions in the recently approved Online Safety Bill that could jeopardize the privacy of encrypted messages.
“When E2EE is the default, we will also use a variety of tools, including artificial intelligence, subject to applicable law, to proactively detect accounts engaged in malicious patterns of behavior rather than scanning private messages,” writes Meta.
It also outlines the steps the company takes to protect youngsters, such as prohibiting persons over the age of 19 from texting teens who do not follow them.
However, in an interview with BBC Breakfast on Wednesday, the Home Secretary stated that Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messaging were the preferred channels for online paedophiles: “In this country, we arrest about 800 perpetrators per month, and we protect about 1200 children per month from this heinous crime.”
She claimed that paedophiles were increasingly “seeking out children online, grooming them, gaining their trust, and duping them into performing sexual acts, indecent acts, and pornographic acts online.”
When asked why, given the powers in the online safety bill, it was necessary to ask Meta to halt the roll out of e2ee, Ms Braverman responded, “We now have wide-ranging powers contained in this new legislation that enables us to direct companies to take necessary steps in specific circumstances via Ofcom the regulator.”
“However, I’d much rather collaborate constructively with these social media companies.” They are important in our life.”
As part of its opposition to the plan, the Home Office has collaborated with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to create a handbook for parents to “advise them on how best to keep their children safe if Meta does implement end-to-end encryption.”
It has also contributed to the production of a film against Meta’s ambitions, which includes testimony from an online survivor of child sexual exploitation.
According to the IWF, the prevalence of the most serious kinds of online child sexual abuse has more than doubled since 2020.
