Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is on a collision course with the UK government over continued plans to build super-secure messaging into all his apps despite a potential landmark law that could effectively outlaw the technology.
Around the world, governments that also oppose popular technology are watching the showdown closely to see who will blink first.
WhatsApp, iMessage, Android Messages and Signal all use a super-secure system called end-to-end encryption. The technology means only the sender, at one end, and the receiver, at the other, can read messages, see media, or hear phone calls. Even the app makers cannot access the content.
Big switchover
End-to-end encrypted apps have become increasingly popular over the past ten years, with billions of people using them every day. Police officers, if they can no longer ask Meta for the contents of people’s messages, will miss out on a key source of evidence they regularly use to convict criminals or terrorists.
Until Mr. Zuckerberg announced on stage four years ago that the Messenger app and then Instagram would move to End-to-end encryption as standard, the majority of governments and security agencies reluctantly accepted the technology’s rise.
End-to-end : Undermines privacy
68 prominent security and privacy researchers also published a letter on Wednesday stating that the Online Safety Bill would effectively break End-to-end encryption as if to highlight the passions on both sides of the debate.
Experts say it is impossible for tech companies to implement child safety measures while maintaining users’ privacy under the bill.
Rebuilding trust
In contrast, WhatsApp and Signal have stated that they would rather remove their services from the UK than compromise the security of end-to-end encryption.
And Elon Musk’s announcement in May that he was incorporating End-to-end encryption into Twitter messages only exacerbated the situation for those who criticized the technology.
Meta shows that switching to technology is hard and expensive, but tech bosses think it’s worth it in the end. Big tech sees it as the key to regaining customers’ trust in its services after years of data scandals.