A new US-UK treaty due to be signed next month will compel Facebook to share encrypted messages with UK police…
Bloomberg reports.
Although the piece mentions Facebook-owned WhatsApp too, those messages are end-to-end encrypted. That means Facebook doesn’t have access to the content and so can’t in fact share it with anyone.
The accord, which is set to be signed by next month, will compel social media firms to share information to support investigations into individuals suspected of serious criminal offenses including terrorism and pedophilia, the person said.
However, Facebook Messenger conversations don’t use end-to-end encryption by default. They are encrypted, but Facebook holds the key so can decrypt them. Only Secret Messages are end-to-end encrypted, which is only available in the app and only if someone selects it – when many don’t even know it exists.
Facebook says that it acts on legal requests, and that this means there is no justification for government pressure on tech companies to compromise strong encryption.
There has been consistent government pressure among the Five Eyes nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and US) for tech companies to either disable end-to-end encryption or create workarounds like the so-called ‘ghost user‘ proposal from the UK.
All the tech giants, including Apple, have rejected calls to share encrypted messages.
In short, Apple — or any other company that allows people to privately chat — would be forced to allow the government to join those chats as a silent, invisible eavesdropper.
While governments argue the compromises they want are targeted at criminals and terrorists, the problem is that any privacy weakness which can be exploited by law enforcement can also be used by criminals or hackers. The best way to protect your privacy is to use platforms and apps offering end-to-end encryption, where nobody but the parties in the message can read the content. Examples include iMessage, FaceTime, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.
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