Attorney General Calls on Facebook to Limit Message-Encryption Plans
October 03 2019 - 3:53PM
Dow Jones News
By Robert McMillan, Jeff Horwitz and Dustin Volz
U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr is asking Facebook Inc. to hold
off on plans to add end-to-end encryption throughout its messaging
services, citing public safety in a push to force the social-media
giant to delay a major strategic shift outlined by Chief Executive
Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year.
Mr. Barr is making the request in an open letter also signed by
his British and Australian counterparts, set to be published
Friday. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Wall Street
Journal, asks the company to delay the encryption plan until it
figures out a way to provide government access to the services for
investigative purposes.
"Companies cannot operate with impunity where lives and the
safety of our children is at stake, and if Mr. Zuckerberg really
has a credible plan to protect Facebook's more than two billion
users it's time he let us know what it is," Mr. Barr's letter
states.
"We strongly oppose government attempts to build back doors
because they would undermine the privacy and security of people
everywhere," a Facebook spokesman said Thursday.
Mr. Barr's salvo reignites a long-running dispute between
technology companies and law enforcement over encrypted
communications. In 2016 the Justice Department filed suit,
requesting access to the encrypted iPhone of San Bernardino,
Calif., shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. Apple Inc. pushed back against
the request, and the suit was eventually dropped when investigators
used another method to obtain access to the phone.
The federal government has avoided a further high-profile
dispute with the technology industry over encryption since then,
but Mr. Barr's letter -- signed by lawmakers from the U.K. and
Australia as well as Kevin McAleenan, acting secretary of homeland
security -- represents a new salvo against a Silicon Valley
giant.
Mr. Zuckerberg has said that extending encryption to the users
of all Facebook products would come at a cost to user safety. But
he has pledged to attempt to mitigate the harms when possible and
said that, overall, people's ability to communicate privately must
be protected.
BuzzFeed News earlier reported on Mr. Barr's letter.
Write to Robert McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com and Dustin
Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 03, 2019 15:38 ET (19:38 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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