Feds want to see FB msgs

Photo: The Canadian Press

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

U.S. Attorney General William Barr and other U.S., U.K. and Australian officials are pressing Facebook to give authorities a way to read encrypted messages sent by ordinary users, re-igniting tensions between tech companies and law enforcement.

Facebook's WhatsApp already uses so-called end-to-end encryption, which locks up messages so that even Facebook can't read their contents. Facebook plans to extend that protection to Messenger and Instagram Direct.

But the officials will ask Facebook to hold off in an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. A copy of the letter, dated Friday, was obtained by The Associated Press.

"Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content, even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes," the officials wrote. The letter repeatedly emphasizes the dangers of child sexual exploitation to justify their stance.

Law enforcement has long sought a way to read encrypted messages that's analogous to wiretaps for phone calls. Security experts, however, say giving police such access makes messaging insecure for everyone. Redesigning encryption to create "back doors" for police also creates vulnerabilities that criminals or foreign spies can exploit, they say.

"Every couple of years, the FBI rears its ugly head and tells us they need to have access to end-to-end encrypted messaging," said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights advocacy group. "You cannot make a back door that only good guys can go through."

Facebook said Thursday that people have the right to have private conversations online and that companies are already able to respond to government agencies when they receive valid legal requests. "We strongly oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere," Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said in a statement.