Boss Mark Zuckerberg, whose firm also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, ignored a plea from Ms Patel to not go ahead. There were 8.8 million bids by UK users to access child abuse during lockdown. More than 99 per cent of the content Facebook takes action against – for child sexual exploitation and terrorism – is identified by the company’s safety systems but encryption would prevent that. And in March 2018, Facebook gave police content from Messenger that was used to link multiple accounts using false identities to fiend Andrew Freethy. Facebook Messenger chat logs provided evidence of grooming and without Facebook’s ability to access the messages, the probe would not have happened.

Source: Daily Mirror October 10, 2020 18:41 UTC