Facebook’s plans to provide end-to-end encryption for its social network have prompted concerns from law enforcement.
The UK has not ordered Facebook to provide law enforcement agencies with a way to access end-to-end encrypted messages on WhatsApp, Sky News has learnt, despite a legal power which could allow it to do so in secret.
However, the power may be used to prevent Facebooks from applying the same encryption protocol to its other services, something the company plans to do despite concerns the move will blind it to child predators’ grooming victims over its platform.Sponsored link
The notice would allow Facebook to use a potentially weaker form of encryption to protect users’ messages, while also forcing the company to retain the ability to monitor those messages and be able to deliver decrypted conversations in response to a warrant – something it cannot do with Whatsap.
According to sources with direct knowledge of discussions between the government and the company, the legal instrument – officially known as a Technical Capability Notice (TCN) – was not used to force Facebook to include what critics describe as a “backdoor” to access specific WhatsApp messages, because no technological mechanism exists to bypass the encryption protocol that WhatsApp uses.
As one former senior civil servant explained to Sky News, there are two key reasons why the government did not issue a TCN to Facebook regarding WhatsApp – despite repeated complaints about the service from successive home secretaries.
The first was that “there isn’t a reasonable method yet” for the company to provide lawful authorities access to the content of targeted messages, simply as a matter of how the technology functions.
A key legal test in the legislation requires it must be “reasonably practicable” for the communications provider to comply with a TCN in order for one to be issued.
However, the encryption protocol that Facebook uses – the Signal protocol, which is becoming an industry standard – has been robustly designed and repeatedly audited by cryptographers to ensure it prevents third parties from accessing the message content.
The second reason, the former civil servant added, was political: “We aren’t sure TCNs will work on American companies, and politicians tend not to want to try and find out.”
While the technological challenge posed by messages encrypted using the Signal protocol is currently insurmountable, the fear about US-based companies dismissing complaints from foreign jurisdictions appears to be shrinking.
According to sources with knowledge of diplomatic meetings between political envoys from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, concerns about Facebook’s plans are gaining the crucial support of the American government.
Through its own monitoring, Facebook submits thousands of reports to US authorities every year about predators using its platforms to attempt to groom children online, and millions of reports about images and videos featuring child abuse.
These child protection authorities estimate that 70% of Facebook’s reports will be lost if the company allows predators and their potential victims to communicate using an end-to-end encrypted service that the company itself can no longer monitor.
Facebook has not disputed this figure, although it argues that it can use the same tools that it uses with WhatsApp – looking for indications of child abuse in the metadata of messages – to detect and tackle predators.
