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Facebooks Encryption Makes it Harder to Detect Child Abuse

Frustratingly, Facebook, the worlds largest social network, is set to grow the digital realm where images of child sexual abuse can spread freely.

Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company is expanding the use of end-to-end encryption on its services, preventing Facebook or anyone else from seeing the contents of communications. When billions of people use a service to connect, some of them are going to misuse it for truly terrible things like child exploitation, terrorism, and extortion.

Broader adoption of end-to-end encryption would cripple the efficacy of programs like PhotoDNA, significantly increasing the risk and harm to children around the world.

Knowing that tens of millions of examples of the most heartbreaking imagery pass through its services every year, why would Facebook undermine the ability to prevent itself from becoming a safe haven for child predators?

The not so cynical answer is that Facebook is leveraging the backlash from its recent privacy scandals to launch a strategy that provides plausible deniability against the equally loud accusations that the company is not doing enough to suppress child abuse material, terrorist propaganda, crime, or dangerous conspiracies. By encrypting the content moving through, Facebook gets a twofer: It can claim to be ignorant of the abuse, while also telling the public that it cares about privacy.

Many in law enforcement have argued that shifting to end-to-end encryption would severely hamper law enforcement and national security.

The US attorney general, his British and Australian counterparts, and the 28 European Union member states have all urged Zuckerberg to delay the implementation of end-to-end encryption until proper safeguards can be put in place.

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Original article
Author: Conde Nast

Conde Nast has recently written 9 articles on similar topics including :
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  2. "The company is turbocharging its bug bounty to try to stop the next data leak before it happens". (October 15, 2019)
  3. "Opinion: Since 2017, nearly every time Mark Zuckerberg has tried to sound thoughtful, he sounds unprepared, shallow, and full of hubris. Time to zip it". (October 29, 2019)
  4. "Whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat, lock down who can see what you're up to". (October 20, 2019)
  5. "Facebook's flaws are apparent, but the CEO's reluctance to police speech shows he stills sees it as a place that connects people and makes the world a better place". (November 1, 2019)
  6. "The Facebook CEO invoked the civil-rights era to justify kowtowing to money and power. It doesn’t wash". (October 18, 2019)
  7. "The social media company says it will more closely monitor foreign outlets, and warn users when posts are considered falseunless they're from politicians". (October 22, 2019)
  8. "The Facebook CEO didn't announce new initiatives in a highly promoted speech, but reaffirmed his view that the company makes the world a better place". (October 19, 2019)
  9. "As attorneys general from one state after another announced probes into tech giants this year, Californias was conspicuously silent. Not anymore". (November 6, 2019)
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