Meta in court: Executives warned of encryption risks

Internal documents have become public in the course of a US court case, revealing that Meta executives had significant concerns about the end-to-end encryption of their platforms. According to Reuters, they feared that encryption could protect perpetrators and make it more difficult to detect the sexual exploitation of minors. While WhatsApp messages have been encrypted since 2016, this feature was only introduced for Messenger and Instagram starting at the end of 2023.

Reuters quotes the head of content policy, Monika Bickert, who described the decision in an internal chat as a “bad thing” and “irresponsible” after Meta's plans were announced in 2019. Meta's global head of safety, Antigone Davis, also expressed strong concerns at the time. In an email assessing the risks of encryption, Davis wrote that it would enable Facebook pedophiles to find each other and children and then seamlessly switch to Messenger.

Meta is currently defending itself in a US court against the accusation of not having adequately secured its platforms against the sexual exploitation of minors. The corresponding lawsuit was filed by the US state of New Mexico in 2023. The main proceedings began in Santa Fe at the beginning of February.

The downside of message encryption

In another document from 2019, Meta estimated that the total number of explicit child depictions reported to authorities would have decreased from 18.4 million to 6.4 million with Messenger encryption activated. A later update to the same document also stated that the company would have been unable to transmit information to law enforcement agencies in hundreds of cases of child exploitation and many other crimes.

Meta rejects the accusations and states that the internal concerns led to the development of additional protective functions before the introduction of encryption. These included, for example, special accounts for minors, which are intended to prevent unknown adults from making contact. The company also emphasizes that users can continue to report problematic messages despite standard encryption, which are then reviewed and forwarded to law enforcement agencies if necessary.

The lawsuit filed by Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez emerged from a covert investigation. The authorities created Facebook and Instagram accounts, posing as underage users. Subsequently, the platforms allegedly actively bombarded the users with offensive depictions and enabled adults with abusive intentions to contact the supposed underage users. This latter phenomenon is also referred to as grooming and is a widespread problem on social networks.

End-to-end encryption follows a principle that other services such as Signal, Threema, and Apple's iMessage also use by default. It serves data protection and prevents providers or third parties from reading along. Because this also makes law enforcement more difficult, some politicians have long been calling for so-called chat control. Security researchers and data protection organizations, in turn, warn that such interventions would fundamentally undermine the confidentiality of digital communication. The debate is therefore not specific to Meta but applies to end-to-end encryption in messengers in general.

(emw)