Politics and technology collide. Indeed, Meta plans to improve the “end-to-end encryption” or E2EE functionality. The idea is to strengthen the security of messages and calls made from Messenger from 2023. Currently, the default end-to-end encryption feature is in the testing phase but this has created disputes with several governments who believe that this feature hinders their work to fight against crime.
Indeed, Priti Patel, the British Home Secretary, has claimed that the Meta project is a “grotesque betrayal”. Its main argument is that the introduction of end-to-end encryption will have big impacts on child safety. Thus, she asks Meta to ensure that safeguards against online child abuse are put in place.
Priti Patel fears child abuse is on the rise
The minister argues that Meta’s plan to introduce E2EE will put a spoke in the wheels of society itself because it would no longer be able to report harmful or disturbing content. Her biggest fear is that it will prevent the police from investigating child abuse. Remember that a large number of child predators use social media platforms like Facebook to discover, target and sexually abuse children.
Thus, it is essential that the police have access to the information they need in order to identify the children targeted and to protect them from ill-intentioned people. To this end, end-to-end encryption would have catastrophic consequences. Ms Patel appeals to Meta for a possible collaboration with the Home Office.
Safeguards must be in place
Priti Patel explained that Meta needed to work with her department to introduce safeguards ahead of the E2EE deployment. She is also in favor of the GCHQ proposals which showed that digitization could reduce the prevalence of online child sexual abuse while retaining the privacy benefits of E2EE.
In response to this, Meta explained that he does not condone child exploitation on his platform. It focuses on solutions that don’t require the intrusive analysis of people’s private conversations. Additionally, it will continue to work with law enforcement to keep users safe.