Meta Encryption 'Blindfolds' Authorities To Child Abuse, Crime Agencies Claim (ft.com) 84
The FBI, Interpol and the UK's National Crime Agency have accused Meta of making a "purposeful" decision to increase end-to-end encryption in a way that in effect "blindfolds" them to child sex abuse. From a report: The Virtual Global Taskforce, made up of 15 law enforcement agencies, issued a joint statement saying that plans by Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta to expand the use of end-to-end encryption on its platforms were "a purposeful design choice that degrades safety systems," including with regards to protecting children. The law enforcement agencies also warned technology companies more broadly about the need to balance safeguarding children online with protecting users' privacy. "The VGT calls for all industry partners to fully appreciate the impact of implementing system design decisions that result in blindfolding themselves to CSA [child sexual abuse] occurring on their platforms or reduces their capacity to identify CSA and keep children safe," the statement said.
Doors are doing the same thing in real life! (Score:5, Insightful)
Doors are being used to stop law enforcement seeing crimes being committed as they walk down the street!
Personally, I think the right to privacy trumps the need for law enforcement to be able to snoop on everybody's conversations just in case someone might be breaking the law.
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Yup. And that is why there are so many housing codes which prevents you from making strong doors (in the pretext of firefighters needing to break your doors in case of emergency). The same rule applies to windows as well. This makes it easier for thieves to commit robbery.
Now, they want to bring that analogy to encryption as well. But the danger here is that unlike windows and doors which can be broken by people who are in your vicinity, the encryption can be broken by anyone and they can rob you as well. I
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Nothing prevents you from making a strong door, and drug dealers do it all the time. You have that freedom right now. It is quite stupid to make a make such strong doors because of some very valid reasons. Real doors are not perfectly analogous to encryption, because a strong encryption does not have the power to kill you in case your house catches on fire.
I was more thinking that they want the encryption to be gone completely so that they can just look at whatever whenever they want... just imagine doors b
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> It is quite stupid to make a make such strong doors because of some very valid reasons.
Is one of those valid reasons that houses are now vinyl siding attached to paper mache. So a solid wood door is actually stronger than an exterior wall.
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Nothing prevents you from making a strong door, and drug dealers do it all the time. You have that freedom right now.
Sure, but that's more to keep out other drug dealers than police.
Either way I think the big difference between a door and digital communication is that you generally (not always) know when someone has been through your door, but you very rarely know if someone is snooping on your messaging.
Among other things, this makes large scale digital surveillance possible in a way that isn't possible by walking through people's doors.
Maybe that's part of the compromise. FB keeps a key to the encryption, and it can be
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The best way to combat "child porn" is via online honeypots - something the UK met already does on a large scale.
They can also finance some scary TV documentaries showing how good they are at it, and send the news agencies a constant stream of stories about how kiddy-fiddlers are being caught every day.
Re: Doors are doing the same thing in real life! (Score:2)
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I know of no such housing codes, though I'm willing to be convinced by a citation or two.
However, a project I worked on was involved in a jurisdictional dispute over the pharmacy in a mixed use building. The health department officials won't let anyone but pharmacists have a key to the pharmacy, and fire officials required the pharma
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A worthwhile reminder that "security" has to be "seen in the round". I remember from a long time ago that the "crime prevention department" of the police strongly recommended that anysafe which weighed less than a ton should be bolted through a floor (or structural wall) to prevent .... well, it's pretty obvious. (sorry - this is Slashdot - never underestimate the disconnect between readers and reality. Do I need to explain?)
Ditto - a friend who put a "London Bar" on the fra
Re:Doors are doing the same thing in real life! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. Won't anybody think of the children? These children grow up, and then have to live in a world where they have no privacy. In the end, everyone suffers, even the children.
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You're a little too optimistic for my taste.
Law enforcement doesn't prosecute the leaders of child sex crimes anyways. Epstein list anyone?
So not only will children still be abused by Hollywood, politicians and the rich but now they'll use lack or encryption and privacy to hunt down whistle blowers who expose this corruption.
Which part of my scenario isn't already playing out?
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but but think of the CHILDREN! This is such a blatant plea to emotion it is disgusting.
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I think this is a cross-party issue for once and it's largely about the UK semi-fascists trying to force Meta and Apple to put a backdoor in their messaging apps.
They told the Tories to go f*ck themselves.
I personally spent thousands of hours protesting mass surveillance. And it's not like child abusers won't find some other encrypted message system to use.
Snowden is an Americam hero.
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Somehow ... I get the feeling that you have no Dutch in your cultural ancestry?
To explain : since the (approximately) 17th century, the Dutch have had the social convention that curtains are something you commit crimes behind (including "not tidying often enough"), so having curtains on *any* rooms (including most specifically, rooms facing a public highway) is an admission that you have some horrible crimes in your house whic
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To be fair (and I don't agree with them), in your example they are saying that the house owner is wilfully blinding themselves to crimes happening on their property.
That's where the analogy falls apart. Encryption is not like a blindfold. The houses in question are all over the world, some in places where the government would very much like to enter in order to abuse the people living there.
Illegal shady s**t (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't call them criminals, but in the USA we're supposed to be protected by a constitution, indeed government officials are sworn to uphold it.
Tacit surveillance of communications between private individuals, absent a compelling reason (and fishing for bad stuff is not the valid reason), we are supposed to be protected from unreasonable search.
It's for this reason that Signal and many other encrypted transports are available and used by honest, law-abiding citizens millions of times every day. They're pro
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They violate the Constitution at mass scale, it is the highest law in the land. You can't get any more criminal than that. Combine that with the way the justice department and FBI have become nothing but a partisan gestapo and there isn't dark and deep enough pit in which to house the scum.
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If it has not been clear before, it should be painfully clear by now. Do not trust anyone, especially people with power.
The default should be secure, and if the authorities suspect anything, they should be able to go to a judge and get a warrant to go through your stuff, and the power to enforce it, like putting you in jail until you provide access to the bit that they are interested in. Digital locks are no different than physical locks.
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Other than that and a host of other things, sure, digital locks are no different than physical ones.
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You might have to provide a citation.
If law enforcement wants to access a place you regularly access, and a court commands you to provide that access, and you don't, you can bet that you will be seeing the inside of a jail cell pretty soon. In the real world, cops usually have the option to bash the door in, so they technically don't need your key... unless of course you have a particularly secure setup.
Claiming that you "lost" the key is analogous to claiming that you "forgot" the password. You would have
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Re: Illegal shady s**t (Score:2)
At least in the US, in criminal matters, you can't be forced to provide a password or even admit that something is in fact locked or has encrypted data. Even in civil cases, they can refuse.
It may not have been settled by the Federal Supreme Court yet, but appeals courts have and so have state Supreme Court's. There have been a couple of exceptions from random lower courts, but they generally involve things like, the police have already seen the in incriminating evidence and/or they previously admitted to h
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You know, if you feds hadn't gotten caught breaking literally EVERY law that protects law abiding Americans from mass surveillance, the world probably wouldn't be wrapped in encryption today.
Also: If you had gone after the cybercrooks rather than letting them go wild on us - instead building powerful collections of spy tools and letting them get hold of THOSE and tune them up for their own use - we might have avoided a situation where everybody needs industrial/military grade encryption to use the net at a
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You know, if you feds hadn't gotten caught breaking literally EVERY law that protects law abiding Americans from mass surveillance, the world probably wouldn't be wrapped in encryption today. Normal, rational people don't trust criminals like the FBI, MI5, etc. You had your chance and you blew it. You put yourself on this level.
More to the point, back when "the world" wasn't wrapped in so much encryption, three-letter agencies still could not stop or prevent this type of crime, so asking to go back to the "good ol' days" of FTP and HTTP because of "the children" is ironically a rather proven shit excuse.
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I definitely remember everyone finally moving to https in the wake of the Snowden leaks. Now supposedly they’re finding that too much data is counterproductive to their mission. supposedly. Not sure if I believe it when Snowden said they were building datacenters in bunkers around the world, just in case our IMs have some value in the post nuclear apocalypse.
But if the glowies are to be believed, they basically shot themselves in the foot overplaying their hand.
license to kill? (Score:2)
I saw a series of documentaries recently that talked about how MI5 gives guys a license to kill. They've got this one guy who has been going all over the world killing people since the 60s.
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James Bond. (Score:2)
Hi name : James Bond.
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I think you have me mistaken for someone else. My name is Singeon Smythe.
Will nobody think of the children (Score:5, Interesting)
Piling emotional blackmail on top of magical thinking; what politicians do best.
One of the things that the TV series 'Yes, Minister' provides an answer for is: 'Why do our lords and masters bother with the trappings of democracy?' The answer is that it gives them a supply of plausible stooges to mobilise support behind their policies...
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Won't anybody think of the children!
When you see that line, you know they are up to something and they want you to react irrationally by just letting them do what they want.
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If you think of the children all the time, I'd guess you're a pedo.
Nah - just a fear addled bureaucrat (Score:2)
Or someone employed in that sort of post. Remember there are people who make a career out of this sort of attitude. Note that the same applies to many non-profits...
Re:Will nobody think of the children (Score:5, Interesting)
Piling emotional blackmail on top of magical thinking; what politicians do best.
One of the things that the TV series 'Yes, Minister' provides an answer for is: 'Why do our lords and masters bother with the trappings of democracy?' The answer is that it gives them a supply of plausible stooges to mobilise support behind their policies...
People overall, not just politicians.
"Moms for Liberty" (book banning / wannabe book burners) is another great example of a group crying out "THINK OF TEH CHILLDRENNN!!!!!"
FaceBook (and other companies) will use kids as shields from government / courts or individual backlash.
Governments are made up of people, and that includes law enforcement. One thing that people tend to do is serve their own interest and/or seek to impose their own belief structure onto others. To impose will requires power. Governments, Activists, and Corporations are in a constant tangle for power... aka the ability to impose their will on others.
Basically you're half-right, because you didn't realize the overall equation wasn't just one subset of people in a particular job.
it's always CP or terrorism, always. (Score:2)
The nefarious deeds of .0005% of the user base clearly trumps any privacy concerns of the rest of us.
You don't actually have freedom of speech without privacy and anonymity.
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Over half of humanity still labors under modern panopticons and "imagine a boot stepping on a human face, forever".
Don't build these tools of tyranny, then it can't be abused. This is a design principle behind the US constitution, with things like the First Amendment, and the principle the government only has powers The People grant to it, and no others.
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Recall the video where a black man is 'sagging' his jeans and some cop is frisking him? The cop sees a long, slender bulge and begins fondling it, asking the man what this is hidden in his pants and the young man answers, "that's my penis?" That search was probably allowed legally beca
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your post would have been better without the weird gay interracial porn tangent.
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In the current season of Picard, Geordi La Forge is quoted as saying "there isn't a law of physics that can't be weaponized or overcome by a different law of physics being weaponized".
I'd say you can drop the two occurrences of "of physics" and get an equally true statement regarding the modern world.
Subpoena the data (Score:2)
Facebook does end-to-end encryption to look like they value your privacy. But they have your data at the other end. All the authorities have to do is ask for it and Facebook will roll over.
Therefore their anti-encryption bitching doesn't hold water.
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yes, but they need a warrant for that (at least in the US). do you know how inconvenient it must be to get a judge's rubber stamp?
it would save so much time and tax dollars to just collect everything and automate parsing it for not only actual crime, but also wrongthink/precrime. (maybe misgendering or saying the no-no naughty word)
And then just get the warrant after the fact -- parallel construction is great.
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No. What you need in the US to subpoena any data without a warrant in the US is a national security letter. Clever cops make up some nebulous terrorist threat, serve a national security letter to the provider, the provider coughs up the data, and then the cop goes "Oh well, no terror threat after all. But look! Pedo material!". Voila: subpoenaed data without a warrant.
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Facebook does end-to-end encryption to look like they value your privacy. But they have your data at the other end.
That's not in fact what's meant by end-to-end encryption, which is that the intermediary providing the encryption solution can't read your messages. Facebook is both a recipient and the encryption provider. SSL would only be end to end encryption if the encryption were managed by the internet itself, without any intervention from the end points.
Of course, you can't actually trust end to end encryption provided by a vendor, the only trustworthy encryption is when you control your end, and the other party con
Incorrect argument (Score:5, Interesting)
What percentage of the warrants or subpoenas served by the FBI, Interpol and the UK's National Crime Agency are investigating Child Abuse? I certainly don't want to downlplay any serious crime, but none of these agencies are delivering their real argument. They are just hoping that an appeal to emotion will cause everybody not to notice the greater impact.
The systemic abuse of legal discovery over a great number of years by law enforcement has led to this in the first place. I am involved at my workplace in responding to these things, and it's a big pain in the ass. Courts are willing to grant very broad discovery rights; we have to push back on every request we get. If the records are old enough we can just delete them and be rid of the hassle, you bet we will. It's a huge cost savings to just be able to just say 'no' to a subpoena.
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What percentage of the warrants or subpoenas served by the FBI ... are investigating Child Abuse?
And what percentage of THOSE are investigating an actual claim of child abuse, rather than, for instance, using a made-up claim to break into somewhere they had no real cause to raid, demolishing the exit paths, teargassing the inhabitants including all their children, and igniting the building, turning the teargas into a cyanide compound and killing most of the trapped kids that didn't get burned.
Window Shades Blind Cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Cops cannot see any child abuse or other criminal activities in people's houses because of the criminal gear called a "Shade".
In fact, some of the manufacturers have gone so far as to call their shades "Blinds" because of how they blind the cops to crimes committed by people in their homes.
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That law specifically speaks to the draw cords of shades potentially being harmful to children. While the law is arguably overreaching, it is not really relevant to the GP's post.
How dare they! (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly this is nothing but an attempt to thwart investigations and law enforcement by Meta, and is in no way designed to protect user communications from the prying eyes of bad actors (like these assholes)!
Did all those Catholic priests have a WhatsApp gro (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'll believe they care when... (Score:1)
They start promoting proper nutrition, healthcare, education, etc.
Open criminal investigation into churches, schools and other institutions that have given abusers safe harbors...
Encryption is not the barrier t
Change "Child Sex Abuse" to "Alt-Right" or "Trump" (Score:2)
Change "Child Sex Abuse" to "Alt-Right" or "Trump" and watch how quickly the comments would change here. Maybe Interpol needs a different strategy.
Sure, it's Meta's fault.... (Score:1)
Oh let's face it.
The UK authorities have blinded THEMSELVES to things like kiddie porn, rape gangs and child trafficking.
It's simply easier to police "mean words" on Twitter than to tackle child rapists and be called "racist" for it.
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Yep, they have a history of it, including ignoring rape complaints. Seems the pixels on the Internet are wayyyy worse than the actual rapes happening. Or at least that is what their actions imply.
Boo-fuckin'-hoo (Score:2)
Someone should openly ask these so-called 'agencies' what's with their hard-on about having the ability to know everything about what everyone is/has been doing, ever, everywhere. Seriously.
Soooo (Score:2)
That means if some child abuse does not end up on meta (or the Internet), they are _blind_ to it? That sounds completely unacceptable. It would mean that any child rapist can just not make pictures (or not share them) and they would be perfectly safe. Anybody else sees anything wrong with that?
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Well, it would make them harder to catch in these online honey pots that they currently use, or in the indexed database of everyone's conversations that they want to have. It would rely on the child telling someone and the police investigating it.
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Unless you think that a majority of all child abuse ends up on the Internet (which is really not plausible) they already have to do that. Or they could just continue to focus on the Internet and let 99% of child abuse victims just be screwed. That sounds like an exceptionally immoral approach to me.
Is this change in values the new normal? (Score:2)
To abstain from spying on your users, means you "blindfolded" yourself? It almost seems like people want pervasive surveillance so much, that they consider it a reasonable, natural default. Services are supposed to spy on their users, and any deviation from that is now considered suspicious.
A mere 20 years ago, I bet this attitude would have been considered creepily weird, as well as deeply un-American. What the fuck did we do to ourselves?
It's always about the children...except it isn't (Score:2)
The FBI, Interpol and the UK's National Crime Agency weren't doing much to protect children before they launched this latest assault on our privacy. Long before end-to-end encryption, they had every opportunity to aggressively pursue purveyors of kiddie porn. Their efforts weren't all that impressive: a few wins here and there, no overall impact. So now they're claiming end to end encryption is the problem? Screw off. Go do your jobs, you stupid, lazy fascists.
I'm 100% confident kiddie porn will be at
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There was an old case showing exactly what they were willing to do to get a kiddie porn arrest.
This was back in the VHS days, pre-internet. The Feds took over a mail order pr0n business (I think because of unpaid taxes) and decided to use it to catch kiddie pr0n consumers. Some recluse liked his pr0n and was a regular buyer from this business and the Feds decided he was a prime target, so they started included kiddie pr0n choices in the catalog. But the guy wasn't into that. He was into vanilla stuff.
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Thanks for that story. My girlfriend and I knew a guy who had been talked into pleading guilty to molesting some children. Both sides agreed that if the kids were forced to testify, he'd come across as a monster, and be sure to get thrown in prison forever. He was promised a very short jail sentence, the kind he might actually be able to survive by staying in solitary, if he just pled guilty. So he got his very short jail sentence, but he lost his job, his house and his family, and wound up getting bad
The Ship Has Sailed (Score:2)
Back in the 90s I started playing with PGP. I created a private/public keypair and I started signing emails and newsgroup messages that I wrote. Of course, no one was trying to impersonate me, so this was a complete waste of time, but it was good clean fun.
What I really wanted to do, however, was send actual encrypted messages. This required someone else get involved in my little fantasy. I published my public key everywhere, but just like no one was interested in impersonating me, no one was interest
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Funny enough, I just gave my public key to another department so they could email me some credentials that need to be kept secured.
Police state much? (Score:1)
Meta Encryption... (Score:1)
Also shields Crime Agencies (aptly refered to) from perpetuating crime and/or committing crimes.
Various tech can be repurposed as a tool for criminals. Hammers dont have to be used for nails etc.
Why is the "think of the children" angle assualting my right to free association, privacy, security against id theft, fraud etc?
I Have yet to see meta data on the dark web be a major factor in busting such criminals. Seems more important for govs to wage war against their populace if not the info selling corps.
Human or Computer Based? (Score:2)
In the US, it's called the Fourth Amendment (Score:2)
And it is a royal pain for law enforcement to have to play by rules.
Necessarily so.
Other nations may not have equivalent 'protections', but they should. People should be secure in their possessions, free from arbitrary searches, and enjoy the presumption of innocence, compelling prosecutors to make their case and without forced self-incrimination.
This is still a controversial and somewhat unpopular opinion worldwide. Justice is hard. That is not a sufficient excuse to oppress the citizenry.
Zuckerberg should be prosecuted (Score:1)
The usual pathetic crying (Score:2)
Abuse (Score:1)