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 were opposed to an end of not receiving.
In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, four ministers ask him to "not complete his plan to encrypt end-to-end email services (...) without including a means to legally access the content of communications in order to protect our citizens ".
Facebook "has undertaken important work to fight against the most serious illegal contents," US Justice Minister Bill Barr, US Interior Minister Kevin McAleenan and his British counterparts Priti Patel and Australian Peter Dutton said in their letter. .
They note that in 2018 the group reported 16.8 million reports of pedophile images or behavior.
"We think that a lot of these activities will no longer be possible if Facebook completes its project" and that 70% of the reports will no longer be feasible, add the officials, calling Facebook to "suspend" his project the time of Define solutions that guarantee the safety of users.
Ministers also call on Mark Zuckerberg to "integrate public safety into the design of his systems" and "to allow law enforcement to have legal access to content in a readable and usable format", without specifying they hear concretely.
"We think people have the right to have private conversations on the internet," the Internet giant said, referring to the law that allows investigators to request data from companies through a judge, "without to force them to create back doors ", a flaw introduced without the knowledge of the user that turns the software into a Trojan.
"Encryption already protects messages from more than one billion people every day," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. "We are strongly opposed to the government's attempts to build backdoors," he added.
Vilipended all over the world for not protecting enough personal data of its users, Facebook has recently promised to focus on encrypted email for more security, promising to encrypt its Messenger platform as is already WhatsApp.
© 2019 AFP