FBI and others urge Meta to halt encryption plans, citing child abuse risk

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/meta-plan-to-make-facebook-messages-more-secure-faces-law-enforcement-backlash/

by mfiguiere • 3 years ago

37 32 3 years ago

arstechnica.com

hgsgm• 3 years ago

What would folks think of this compromise?

Do the AI threat detection stuff on the device, and warn the user if suspected abusive images/text are detected?

olliej5• 3 years ago

The governments don't want the user to be told, they want the government to be told.

There are already numerous stories of people suffering tremendous harm because of the systems that are already in place for this purpose. Do you have a photo of your tiny kids playing in a pool? better hope google doesn't report you to the police and permanently ban you from all their services and delete all your data.

singleshot_2• 3 years ago

I think it’s far, far worse than this. Have you ever been inconvenienced because of a software bug? Now imagine you’re in jail for child sexual exploitation.

Have you ever tried to contact one of these big service providers to get something fixed? Would you like Google tech support (snort) be the last thing standing between you and a prison sentence?

I think the absolute last place we want to be is in a world where we can’t make money to eat without our portable computer/phone that runs broken software made by some scammy dot com whose salient feature is that if we don’t stay ahead of it, it will imprison the user.

throwaway677436• 3 years ago

There is a solution to the latter point, don't use malicious companies like Google, because really they're awful in so many other ways this is way down on the list.

tadfisher• 3 years ago

How about the users receiving abusive images/text report them to the government when received? Don't need to break E2EE for that.

Paul-Craft• 3 years ago

You're assuming the recipients don't want to receive said data.

singleshot_2• 3 years ago

I would think that’s a profoundly intrusive way to treat 330 million citizens of a liberal democracy against whom you have discovered no reasonable suspicion and developed no probable cause. We have a fourth amendment for a reason and it’s to prevent evil tyrants from oppressing us.

Run whatever you want on your phone but this is a hard pass from me.

waselighis2• 3 years ago

You may already be aware, but Apple tried to implement this on their devices a couple years ago. "Client side scanning". There was huge public backlash and Apple eventually moved away from the idea.

echoer_lyrist• 3 years ago

I do not believe that the organization that covered for Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Nasser cares about child abuse.

willcipriano• 3 years ago

Releasing Epsteins client list would let people ensure that they don't allow children to come in contact with travelers on the Lolita Express. They could do that today.

nubinetwork• 3 years ago

Damned if you do, damned if you don't... but I would pick encryption over not...

diebeforei485• 3 years ago

9/11 was used as an excuse for every encroachment on civil liberties.

"Child abuse" is the current excuse.

Meta should go ahead with encryption.

olliej5• 3 years ago

The most stupid and frustrating thing is all the required agencies knew about 9/11, but did nothing because internal politics meant they weren't cooperating.

In the UK the Manchester bomber had been reported repeatedly to the police.

How about governments demonstrate an ability to use the information they already have, before they start mass reduction in safety and privacy. Especially when the US government has been repeatedly found to engage in mass warrantless surveillance, or in the UK where all the "prevent terrorism and child abuse" laws are used to fine people for not paying TV licensing fees, or catch people not cleaning up after dog poop, etc.

Similarly any surveillance law should have a poison pill: "this law is rescinded in its entirety if any government agency or organization at any level uses any ability from this law for any purpose other than preventing terrorism or child abuse". Of course you still run into things like conservatives saying that anything that acknowledges gay or trans people as being people with human rights is child abuse and terrorism, so...

tinglymintyfrsh4• 3 years ago

Exactly. It's immoral to bet the lives of people that governments of the future will always be sane or benevolent. History has shown democratically-elected populist autocrats can go in dark directions. Make it as difficult as possible to target individuals and groups from harm by guarding their data.

tinglymintyfrsh4• 3 years ago

I don't speak for the company, but it's going ahead.

prirun• 3 years ago

The ridiculous thing is that encryption is so trivial, any criminal can implement it with a few lines of code and can keep their key entirely private, known only to them and whoever they decide.

No reasonable person wants kids to be abused, but trading the privacy and security of an entire planet to make it easier for law enforcement to catch a few criminals is not reasonable either.

tinglymintyfrsh4• 3 years ago

Law enforce can get wiretaps for call content and conversations on traditional media.

What's frightening without e2ee is the possibility of governments targeting people with secret mass surveillance orders searching for particular keywords at any point in the future.

It's better to not store content or metadata in a way that puts users at risk. Lock it up.

Intelligence and law enforcement will need to use traditional techniques rather than have backdoors into every corner of every system, because we know those were never abused. ;-]

pixl97• 3 years ago

Yep, encrypt and destroy. Even encrypted data is at risk of having the key leaked at some point.

tinglymintyfrsh4• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

Meanwhile, users are at risk from being targeted by hostile governments because their data isn't encrypted.

waselighis2• 3 years ago

Two things need to happen before I would even begin to consider a ban on E2EE:

1. Show that the problem of child abuse on social networks is wildly out of control. I hear about it all the time, but what are the numbers? Where is the data?

2. Make a concrete argument explaining why there are no viable alternatives. What are the proposed alternatives, and why aren't they viable? All I ever hear is "omg we're going dark all hope is lost".

The article only includes one example:

The Virtual Global Taskforce statement cited the case of UK-based sex offender David Wilson ... Wilson used Facebook "to contact thousands of children, grooming hundreds of victims using fake online profiles" ... law enforcement were able to access the evidence contained within over 250,000 messages through Facebook.

Thousands of children. A quarter million messages. I find it hard to believe that E2EE would have hidden all this activity. Surely Meta could monitor for suspicious activity on their platform and investigate any red flags. Surely, of the thousands of children contacted by this person, some of those children would have reported it, providing law enforcement with potentially thousands of unencrypted messages?

Honey pots. Law enforcement can setup fake profiles of children. I've seen deepfakes that make adults look and sound like children. Then just sit and wait for one of these sick f**s to contact you. Voila, you receive all the messages unencrypted because you're one of the "end"s in END to END encryption.

At the end of the day, I feel they haven't made a compelling argument against E2EE encryption. And, frankly, I just don't trust our institutions - our governments, corporations, and even non-profits - have proven again and again they can't be trusted. Anybody remember when the FBI tried to force Apple to decrypt an iPhone on some b***s**t excuse, and later it turned out the FBI really just wanted a general backdoor into ALL iPhones? Yeah, those institutions.

throwaway677436• 3 years ago

1. Show that the problem of child abuse on social networks is wildly out of control. I hear about it all the time, but what are the numbers? Where is the data?

The same people that say it's rampant on social media are the same people that also still say the majority know their abuser (ie family members etc) - it's all narrative, no substance.

Also if it was as widespread as they claim, the statistical probability would mean that almost everyone knows one or more victims, that isn't the case either...

LinuxBender• 3 years ago

I know a few victims. Technology was never even part of the equation. The internet didn't even exist at least as we know it today. In every case that I know of it was coaches and family members. Even banning the internet entirely would not have prevented any of those cases.

jacooper2• 3 years ago

Please let up spy on everyone

jacooper2• 3 years ago

us*

throwaway677436• 3 years ago

It's pretty hilarious, surely nobody will take either the FBI or ICE seriously?

One is a law enforcement agency, the other is a migrant rights abusing agency so there is a severe conflict of interest...

Also, officers of old did a lot more with a lot less, so they should just do their jobs instead of relying on easy access to communications, or simply put: be less incompetent.

DoItToMe81• 3 years ago

The horror. The authorities may have to get warrants and individually investigate suspicious people instead of abusing dragnet surveillance. Won't somebody please think of the children?

Even with E2E encryption, you can still see that a suspicious person is contacting a child. You can still see what he's saying from the child's device, which parents absolutely should be doing, and you can still ascertain what sick things he's doing through a rudimentary investigation.

FBI and others urge Meta to halt encryption plans, citing child abuse risk

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