Attorney General Calls on Facebook to Limit Message-Encryption Plans

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)

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