Washington (AFP)

The US, British and Australian governments on Thursday urged Facebook to refrain from encrypting all of its platforms without guaranteeing access to the police, but met with an end of failure.

Washington and London have also announced the signing of a bilateral agreement that will make it easier for police officers in one country to turn to companies on the other side to ask them for useful data to investigate serious crimes such as pedophilia. terrorism.

Investigators around the world face a real headache when it comes to retrieving emails, instant messages and photos stored on servers abroad, "digital evidence" yet essential to break the truth.

Politicians have regularly wanted access to these data, but this request is difficult to reconcile with the imperative to respect the privacy of users.

Vigilated all over the world for not enough secure data, Facebook has also recently promised to encrypt its messenger platform Messenger as is already WhatsApp.

In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, US justice ministers Bill Barr and the Interior Kevin McAleenan, along with their British counterparts Priti Patel and Australian Peter Dutton, ask him not to complete this project "without including a means to legally access the contents of communications in order to protect our citizens ".

Facebook "has undertaken important work to fight the most serious illegal content," say ministers in their mail, made public on the eve of a major conference in Washington on law enforcement access to digital data .

They note that in 2018 the group reported 16.8 million reports of pedophile images or behavior. If Facebook puts its project into effect, 70% of these reports will no longer be feasible, say the officials, calling the group to "suspend" its reform the time to find a solution.

- "collapsing sidewalks" -

"We are staunchly opposed to the government's attempts to build backdoors," the internet giant said in reference to unauthorized openings made by the user to turn the software into a Trojan horse.

"We believe that people have the right to have private conversations on the internet," added one of his spokesmen, referring to the law that allows investigators to request data from companies through a judge.

This law, the "Cloud Act" was adopted in March 2018 and put an end to a legal dispute born of the refusal, in 2013, of Microsoft to deliver to the American justice of the e-mails of a suspected drug trafficker, on the grounds that they were stored in Ireland.

It also allows the US government to enter into bilateral agreements with countries that respect human rights, so that investigators from both sides can make their demands directly to private operators in their partner's home.

London and Washington must sign the first agreement of this type Friday night. Australia and Canada may soon do the same, but the discussions are more complicated with the European Union.

The Center for Democracy and Technology criticized both the pressure on Facebook and the US-UK deal. "These governments are playing on fears in a concerted effort to decrease the security of communications worldwide and build government oversight," the association said.

"Legislation in favor of less secure technologies is like making sidewalks collapse to prevent criminals from fleeing," one of its leaders, Hannah Quay-de-la-Vallee, quipped. "It's ridiculous, it's not going to work and it puts us all in danger of hurting ourselves."

© 2019 AFP