Users who do not opt in to encryption could be vulnerable to unwitting access to their messages – including police searches
Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PAPhotograph: Dominic Lipinski/PAFacebook announced on Thursday it will begin testing end-to-end encryption as the default option for some users of its Messenger app on Android and iOS.to a Nebraska police department that aided the department in filing charges against a teen and her mother for allegedly conducting an illegal abortion.
But had all Facebook messages been encrypted by default back in June when Nebraska police issued a search warrant for Facebook user data of the mother investigated in the case, Facebook would not have messages to hand over to police in the first place. An affidavit in support of the search warrant in the Nebraska case shows that a Norfolk police department detective asked Facebook in June for the “profile contact information, wall postings, and friend listing, with Facebook IDs” of the mother. Authorities also requested all of her photos and private messages from April to the day the warrant was issued.
“The only way for companies like Facebook to meaningfully protect people is for them to ensure that they do not have access to user data or communications when a law enforcement agency comes knocking,” Evan Greer, the director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future,. “Expanding end-to-end encryption by default is a part of that, but companies like Facebook also need to stop collecting and retaining so much intimate information about us in the first place.