AG Barr asks Facebook to hold off on encryption plans

Facebook
Published on: October 3, 2019
Author: Amy Liu
  • U.S. Attorney General Barr has asked Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) Mark Zuckerberg to postpone plans to add encryption to the company’s messaging services until the company can create a way for law enforcement officials to access illegal content.
  • Barr is making the request in an open letter joined by U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan and Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, saying “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 move opens the latest front in the running battle between individual privacy and public safety; in 2015, Apple resisted a push by the FBI to gain access to an iPhone belonging to a perpetrator of a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., that killed 14 people.
  • WhatsApp already has end-to-end encryption, and Facebook plans to extend that protection to Messenger and Instagram Direct.

“We strongly oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere,” the company says.

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