Facebook rebuffs decoding demand

AUSTRALIA: Social media giant Facebook says it will resist the Turnbull government’s push for it to decrypt messages and hand them over to law enforcement agencies, saying it already provides as much help as it can.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday said technology companies such as Facebook and Apple need to ‘‘face up to their responsibility’’ to help prevent terrorism and solve crimes.

Acknowledging ‘‘this is not without some difficulty’’, Turnbull said the government would legislate to force companies to provide encrypted communications requested by the police and other agencies. ’’What we’re seeking to do is to secure their assistance,’’ Turnbull said at a media conference in Sydney.

‘‘They can’t just, you know, wash their hands of it and say it’s got nothing to do with them. So we need - what we need to do is to secure their co-operation.’’

Asked if the company would cooperate with the government, a Facebook spokeswoman told Fairfax Media: ‘‘We appreciate the important work law enforcement does, and we understand their need to carry out investigations.

‘‘That’s why we already have a protocol in place to respond to requests where we can.

‘‘At the same time, weakening encrypted systems for them would mean weakening it for everyone.’’

Facebook also owns the popular messaging service WhatsApp, which uses end-to-end encryption and says ‘‘privacy and security is in our DNA’’.

Facebook last month posted an official statement saying it was not capable of reading encrypted messages.

‘‘Because of the way end-to-end encryption works, we can’t read the contents of individual encrypted messages - but we do provide the information we can in response to valid law enforcement requests, consistent with applicable law and our policies,’’ a Facebook’s statement says.

‘‘We know that terrorists sometimes use encrypted messaging to communicate. - Fairfax