Facebook’s encryption move ‘spectacularly harmful to children’
FACEBOOK should be barred from encrypting children’s accounts unless it can prove it will not put them in danger from paedophiles, the NSPCC has said.
The charity warned Facebook’s plans to encrypt its messaging services, including its Messenger app which has more than one billion users, would see the tech giant “lose the ability” to detect grooming on its site.
The NSPCC argued this would put the company in breach of the incoming statutory duty of care the Government is looking to impose on tech giants.
The call comes as Prof Hany Farid, the man who invented the groundbreaking software that detects and blocks millions of abuse images online, told The Daily Telegraph that Facebook’s encryption plans were “spectacularly harmful to children”.
Facebook has been facing mounting criticism since it announced plans to encrypt all its messaging services in April. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, hailed encryption, saying it “prevents anyone, including even us, from being able to see what you share on our services”. He also pledged to wait a year to consult governments and law enforcement about safety implications before introducing encryption.
In July, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said the plans could have “serious consequences” for efforts to purge child abuse and terrorist content from social media. The Government outlined plans in a White Paper earlier this year to impose a legal duty of care on tech companies to protect users. The NSPCC said that tech companies’ responsibility under the duty of care could only be “feasibly met” if messages were unencrypted.
Andy Burrows, the NSPCC’S head of child safety online policy, said: “You absolutely lose the ability to detect what is going on on your site (with encryption) and we know from our own research that Facebook and Facebookowned apps are the predominant sites where (grooming) offences are being recorded. That’s why we have called … for children and young people’s accounts not to be encrypted unless and until a platform can demonstrate that it doesn’t compromise the duty of care.”
The fight against child abuse images online has been spearheaded by software called Photodna, which assigns known abuse images a unique signature that prevents it being re-uploaded.
Prof Farid warned encrypting Messenger would hinder the use of Photodna and could create a “safe harbour” to trade child abuse images.
“There is no question that this is spectacularly harmful to children and dangerous,” he said. “This is morally reprehensible and we should not allow this to happen.”
Facebook said that keeping young people safe on its services was its “top priority”. A spokesman added: “In addition to using technology to proactively detect grooming and prevent child sexual exploitation on our platform, we work with child protection experts, including specialist law enforcement teams like CEOP in the UK, to keep young people safe.”