OAN’s James Meyers
8:33 AM – Friday, December 8, 2023
Meta said they will now be using end-to-end encryption for messages and calls on the Messenger and Facebook apps.
The new technology was announced on Thursday and has been highly promoted and approved by security experts, who have claimed it will help prevent intrusions such as hacking and unknown surveillance.
“This has taken years to deliver because we’ve taken our time to get this right,” Crisan wrote in a blog post. “Our engineers, cryptographers, designers, policy experts and product managers have worked tirelessly to rebuild Messenger features from the ground up,” Messenger head Loredana Crisan wrote.
However, the announcement has been criticized by child safety groups and law enforcement organizations, claiming that default encryption would not be able to detect child exploitation, miss human trafficking attempts, and allow hate speech to spread.
“What will Meta’s bosses say to children who have suffered sexual abuse, whose trauma will be compounded by their decision not to preserve their privacy? How will they justify turning a blind eye to this illegal and harmful content being spread via their platforms?” said Internet Watch Foundation chief executive Susie Hargreaves. “The company has a strong track record in detecting large amounts of child sexual abuse material before it appears on its platforms. We urge Meta to continue this vital protection.”
Meanwhile, Meta has already introduced opt-in encryption, but with the new announcement encryption is now automatic on all messages.
Additionally, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called the announcement a “devastating blow to child protection.”
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a Canadian organization that works to improve child safety, claimed that the new encryption technology would cut the number of reports that it says are crucial to pursuing child exploitation cases.
“Millions of reports by Meta that drive Canadian and international law enforcement responses against child sexual abuse and exploitation will soon cease to exist,” the group wrote. “This decision by Meta means it will lose its ability to effectively monitor these crimes unfolding across large swaths of their platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.”
James Babbage, director general for threats at the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, said in a statement: “As a result of Meta’s design choices, the company will no longer be able to see the offending occurring on their messaging platform, and law enforcement will no longer be able to obtain this evidence from them. This problem won’t go away; if anything it will likely get worse.”
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