Facebook has announced that it will begin testing end-to-end encryption as the default option for some Messenger users on Android and iOS.
The development comes as the company faces backlash for delivering messages to a Nebraska police department that helped the department file charges against a teenager and her mother for allegedly performing an illegal abortion.
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Facebook Messenger users currently have to choose to make their messages end-to-end encrypted (E2E), a mechanism that theoretically allows only the sender and recipient of a message to access its content.
However, if all Facebook messages had been encrypted by default in June, when Nebraska police issued a search warrant for the data of the mother investigated in the case, Facebook would have had no messages to turn over to police in the first place.
Facebook spokesman Alex Dziedzansaid Thursday that E2E encryption is a complex feature to implement and that testing is limited to a few hundred users for nowso the company can ensure the system works properly.
Dziedzan in response to any law enforcement requests.”
Meta , Facebook's parent company, said it had been planning to start the test for months . The company had previously announced plans to make E2E encryption the default in 2022, but has since pushed the date back to 2023 .
An affidavit in support of the search warrant in the Nebraska case shows that a Norfolk Police Department detective asked Facebook in June for the mother’s “profile contact information, wall posts and friends list, with Facebook IDs .” Authorities also requested all of her photos and private messages from April through the day the warrant was issued.
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The extent of user data Facebook ended up handing over is unclear, but private messages between women discussing how to obtain abortion pills were given to police by Facebook, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.
Experts previously told The Guardian that the main way for tech companies to avoid aiding abortion-related prosecutions is to not store or collect the data at all.
“The only way for companies like Facebook to truly protect people is to ensure they don’t have access to user data or communications when a law enforcement agency comes knocking on their door,” Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, said. “Expanding end-to-end encryption by default is part of that, but companies like Facebook also need to stop collecting and retaining so much personal information about us in the first place.”
The Nebraska case shows that some tech companies are focusing on restricting or deleting user data specifically related to abortions in response to privacy, which may not be an effective strategy.
Facebook this week said the warrant it received did not indicate that the investigation was related to abortion.
As Kate Rose, who works on abortion privacy and access at the Digital Defence Fund, wrote on Twitter, "Requests for legal data will not be submitted with any indication that it is about abortion."
Source: theguardian.com
