Tech, Privacy Advocates Tell Facebook to Follow Encryption Plans

Facebook should expand end-to-end encryption across its messaging services, despite pushback from Attorney General William Barr and colleagues in Australia and the UK (see 1910030058), more than 50 tech and privacy groups wrote the platform Thursday. Access Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Engine, Free Press, Internet Society, New America’s Open Technology Institute and TechFreedom signed. “Each day that platforms do not support strong end-to-end security is another day that this data can be breached, mishandled, or otherwise obtained by powerful entities or rogue actors to exploit it,” they wrote. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation separately asked DOJ not to undermine encryption. The department “is clearly attempting to reboot its failed arguments on encryption by reframing the debate as one needed to protect children,” Vice President Daniel Castro wrote, citing better alternatives like “tracking meta-data about user behavior, infiltrating networks of bad actors, and screening images before they are uploaded.” The department didn’t comment Friday.