Under the new US-UK treaty to be signed next month, Facebook and WhatsApp will have to share their users' personal data with UK police for security reasons .
The new treaty, called the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act or simply the Cloud Act, orders Facebook and WhatsApp to disclose their users' electronic communications to British authorities.
It is important to note that the term “electronic communication” does not necessarily mean disclosure of “encrypted messages.” In fact, at one point, the treaty states that it “does not give any right to authorities to compel service providers to decrypt communications.”
Therefore, even if Facebook is forced to share encrypted conversations, it won't help the authorities much, since they are humanly impossible to decrypt.
However, British authorities will now be able to access metadata information such as profile pictures, IP addresses, contact lists, etc. The new condition is very likely to spread to Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
In recent years, Facebook has been the scene of many illegal and unethical activities, such as the promotion of child pornography and hate speech. For this reason, the United Kingdom has asked all such platforms to develop “backdoors” that would allow authorities to access all the information shared between users.
The new treaty may seem somewhat strict, but as Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos points out, the law does not require anything different from US courts.
Facebook believes that the new bill is ideal for achieving a balance between access to data and not violating user privacy.
"Government policies like the Cloud Act allow companies to provide available information when they receive valid legal requests and do not require companies to create backdoors," Facebook said.
