The dispute stems over a March announcement by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who sketched out his vision for a “privacy-focused” future for Facebook and the services under its umbrella, including Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg said the company intends to integrate those services with Facebook’s Messenger app, so users can talk to one another across different apps if they want, while providing “end-to-end” encryption of their chats. Such strong encryption allows only the user and sender to be able to read or hear a conversation’s content. Last year, Facebook made more than 16 million reports of child sexual exploitation and abuse content to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, U.S. and international authorities said. Encrypting chats across its services could mean about 12 million reports “would be lost,” U.S. and foreign officials estimated.

Source: Washington Post October 03, 2019 18:22 UTC