Home Secretary Priti Patel reignites privacy debate by warning Facebook over new end-to-end encryption plans
In her first major statement the new home secretary focused on a cause which Amber Rudd, Theresa May and David Cameron championed.
Wednesday 31 July 2019 19:42, UK
New Home Secretary Priti Patel has reignited a debate about privacy and the government's ability to surveil communications as she criticised Facebook's plans to use end-to-end encryption.
End-to-end encryption is a method of protecting computer communications so that they can only be read by the sender and the recipient.
The email provider, the social media platform and even the administrators of the telecommunications network - or a government spying on that network - are unable to read the contents of any encrypted messages those networks are used to send.
Earlier this year, as part of a privacy-focused rebranding following a number of scandals, Facebook announced it was changing all of its services to use this communications paradigm, moving away from a web interface and towards an app across all kinds of devices.
That decision has now been heavily criticised by Ms Patel following her meeting this week with counterparts from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance - the UK, US, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.
"Facebook's recently announced plan to apply end-to-end encryption across its messaging platforms presents significant challenges which we must work collaboratively to address," Ms Patel said.
"This use of end-to-end encryption in this way has the potential to have serious consequences for the vital work which companies already undertake to identify and remove child abuse and terrorist content.
"It will also hamper our own law enforcement agencies, and those of our allies, in their ability to identify and stop criminals abusing children, trafficking drugs, weapons and people, or terrorists plotting attacks."
Ms Patel suggested that any company which failed to assist law enforcement agencies with their work could find themselves targeted under the government's Online Harms legislation which is expected later this year.
Her arguments echo those previously made by the government when it was attempting to pass the Investigatory Powers Act through parliament.
At the time the government's central argument was that it did "not think that companies should provide safe spaces to terrorists and other criminals in which to communicate".
Technology companies "should maintain the ability when presented with an authorisation under UK law to access those communications, its representatives told parliament. This is currently the law.
However, this has led to a conflict between people calling for the law to recognise the moral importance of facilitating legal communications interception, and technology specialists who suggest that the technical methods to do this would leave everybody less secure.
Describing the problem at "the heart of the end-to-end encryption debate", technology lawyer Graham Smith said: "If you take technical steps to make the internet unsafe for terrorists and criminals, you make it unsafe for the rest of us.
"No amount of Silicon Valley tech wizardry can change that.
"So it's a policy issue, for which it's pertinent to consider the converse. If you make the internet unsafe for the rest of us, does that make it unsafe for terrorists and criminals?
"Not necessarily, as they will use end to end encryption anyway. That genie has been out of the bottle for 20 years. And no amount of legislation will change that."
Antigone Davis, Facebook's head of global safety, said: "Facebook appreciates the discussion with the Five Country Ministerial.
"People should expect that we will do everything we can to keep people safe on our services within the limits of what's possible in an encrypted service. As our CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised, we'll consult with safety experts, law enforcement and governments through 2019 and beyond on the best ways to implement safety measures before fully implementing end-to-end encryption.
"We'll also work together with other platforms to make sure that as an industry we get this right because many open questions remain. The more we can create a common approach, the better."