Home Secretary Priti Patel thinks that Facebook is “blinding” itself to the issue of child abuse on its platforms. Her concern is backed by the fact that Facebook’s new security guidelines and measures will make it easier for paedophiles to get away with crimes against children.
Patel has plans to rethink all messaging on its platforms to be “end-to-end” encrypted. She will also tell the main technology companies to “take the safety of children as seriously as they do the business of selling advertising, phones and online games”.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) will present this demand forward. It was the charity’s report on “end to end encryption” which states that Facebook’s plans will have a “catastrophic” effect on children’s online safety and will remove platforms’ ability to identify harm.
The current policy states that users on Instagram and Facebook Messenger are scanned by the company for images of child sexual abuse or for signs of grooming, with incidents then reported. End-to-end encryption will mean that only the sender and receiver of a message can see its content.
Patel cited that there 4,500 arrests were made last year that took place after tech companies spotted abuse in messages on their platforms.
“The offending will continue, the images of children being abused will proliferate — but the company intends to blind itself to this problem through end-to-end encryption, which prevents all access to messaging content. This is not acceptable. We cannot allow a situation where law enforcement’s ability to tackle abhorrent criminal acts and protect victims is severely hampered,” she said.
A Facebook spokesman said: “Child exploitation has no place on our platforms . . . End-to-end encryption is already the leading security technology used by many services to keep people safe from hackers and criminals. We are building strong safety measures into our plans.”
