Attorney General Bill Barr Will Ask Zuckerberg To Halt Plans For End-To-End Encryption Across Facebook's Apps

'Attorney General Bill Barr, along with officials from the United
Kingdom and Australia, is set to publish an open letter to Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking the company to delay plans for end-to-end
encryption across its messaging services until it can guarantee the
added privacy does not reduce public safety. From a report:

A draft of the letter, dated Oct. 4, is set to be released alongside
the announcement of a new data-sharing agreement between law
enforcement in the US and the UK; it was obtained by BuzzFeed News
ahead of its publication. Signed by Barr, UK Home Secretary Priti
Patel, acting US Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, and
Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, the letter raises
concerns that Facebook's plan to build end-to-end encryption into its
messaging apps will prevent law enforcement agencies from finding
illegal activity conducted through Facebook, including child sexual
exploitation, terrorism, and election meddling.

"Security enhancements to the virtual world should not make us more
vulnerable in the physical world," the letter reads. "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 calls on Facebook to prioritize 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."'

-- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/10/03/1847213

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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