Open Rights Group demands Home Office transparency on end-to-end encryption

The Home Office is allegedly considering measures to compel Facebook to break encryption on its messaging apps

The Open Rights Group (ORG) has urged the Home Office to clarify all legal and technical measures that it has been considering to compel Facebook to break end-to-end encryption on its messaging apps.

The ORG, a privacy advocacy group, has urged the government to explain whether it is considering 'imposing a Technical Capability Notice on Facebook to circumvent end-to-end encryption', and to detail 'what engagement it intends to carry out' before subjecting users' private messages to surveillance. It says this move is predicated on the assumption that 'we are all criminals'.

The demand follows a report by Wired last week, which claimed the Home Office was actively exploring a range of legal and technical options to force Facebook to implement a backdoor in its messaging services. Such a backdoor could give law-enforcement agencies access to the contents of messages sent using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram chat services.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has grown increasingly vocal about the dangers of encryption technology, since Facebook's announcement of the extension of end-to-end encryption in its services in 2019.

Wired claims that Patel is will deliver a keynote speech on 19th April at an event organised by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), which will be highly critical of the encryption technique.

The NSPCC is expected to release a report on end-to-end encryption during the event. An early draft of the report, seen by Wired, says that increased use of end-to-end encryption will protect the privacy of adults at the expense of childrens' safety.

The report will further argue that any strategy adopted by tech firms to mitigate the effect of end-to-end encryption will "almost certainly be less effective than the current ability to scan for harmful content".

The NSPCC said last month that 52 per cent of online child sex crimes in England and Wales were committed over Facebook-owned apps.

The ORG says that attacks by the government cannot be seen as 'just' targeting Facebook. Rather, the government seems to be planning to use powers introduced in the Investigatory Powers Act to curb the ability of online platforms to use encryption, especially at scale.

In 2019, the ORG signed an open letter addressed to the law enforcement authorities in the UK, the US and Australia, which expressed concerns over authorities' statements against the use of encryption in messaging services.

The letter, signed by more than 100 organisations - including Privacy International, Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders - argued that fulfilling the demand of weaker encryption in messaging services would 'endanger the security and privacy of billions of internet users around the world'.

In October 2019, government authorities in the UK, USA and Australia had urged Facebook to delay the implementation of end-to-end encryption across its messaging services. The officials said that the social media platform should provide law-enforcement agencies 'lawful access to content in a readable and usable format'.

They argued that in absence of backdoor access, agencies would lose access to critical evidence about individuals involved in child sexual exploitation and other criminal activities.

Facebook denied the request, stating that including such backdoors would be a gift to 'hackers, criminals and repressive regimes'. The company recently detailed its plans to deploy end-to-end encryption across its messaging apps as 'a long-term project'.