By Robert McMillan, Jeff Horwitz and Dustin Volz
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is asking Facebook Inc. to
hold off on plans to add 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 reviewed 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.
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 additional high-profile
disputes with the technology industry over encryption since then,
but Mr. Barr's letter represents a new effort against a Silicon
Valley giant. It also comes at a time when there is increased
regulatory scrutiny of Facebook and other technology companies.
Despite the Justice Department's push, there remains no
indication that Republican or Democratic lawmakers are currently
interested in pursuing legislation to require tech companies to
allow some form of government access to encrypted
communications.
The prospect of a looming clash with the government over
encryption follows a fresh spate of setbacks for the company, which
earlier Thursday lost a European Union court decision that gave
judges broader power to order the removal of Facebook posts.
On Wednesday, the Journal reported that a Facebook-led coalition
to build a global cryptocurrency-based payments network is starting
to fray. Along with the encrypted-messaging push, Libra is part of
Mr. Zuckerberg's plan to move Facebook away from its almost
complete dependence on targeted advertising as delivered to users
on public platforms.
The tech industry has increasingly used encryption technology to
protect the privacy of electronic communications after former
National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden released
documents in 2013 detailing U.S. government surveillance
programs.
Encryption uses mathematical techniques to scramble digital
files so that they are unreadable by anyone who doesn't have the
digital keys required to unlock them. It is the technique that is
used to protect data on Apple's iPhone and its iMessage system, and
encryption is also at the heart of Facebook's new messaging
ambitions.
Technology companies have long argued that any technique that
would give government access to these encryption systems would
undermine their overall security and could ultimately be misused by
hackers or spy agencies to steal data from consumers.
Even if this technique weren't misused, technology companies
would likely face a barrage of requests from spy agencies and
governments looking for information on opponents, critics said.
"How is Facebook to blindly distinguish what governments are to be
permitted backdoor access to whichever conversations?" said Alec
Muffett, a former Facebook engineer who worked on the company's
encryption technology.
For Facebook, the encryption issue increasingly is at the heart
of its business.
In March, Mr. Zuckerberg outlined a shift in corporate strategy
to focus more on encrypted messaging and small-group chats, which
he cast in part as a response to user demand for greater
privacy.
The company's WhatsApp platform already is encrypted, and Mr.
Zuckerberg said similar capabilities would be added across the
company's other services.
Mr. Zuckerberg has acknowledged that extending encryption to the
users of all Facebook products will 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.
At an internal town hall livestreamed Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg
said encryption made identifying bad behavior online like "fighting
that battle at least with a hand tied behind your back," but he
reiterated that he believes the benefits of greater privacy
outweigh the drawbacks.
Mr. Zuckerberg also observed the issue isn't Facebook's alone,
saying that Apple's iMessage is the country's most popular
messaging platform and is also encrypted.
Apple didn't respond to a request for comment.
The letter from Mr. Barr was also signed by Kevin McAleenan,
acting secretary of homeland security, along with U.K. Home
Secretary Priti Patel and Australia's Minister for Home Affairs
Peter Dutton.
The current push also reflects a strategic pivot for the Justice
Department, which historically sought to highlight how encryption
stymied national security and terrorism investigations. Under Mr.
Barr, the Justice Department has sought instead to emphasize the
trouble law enforcement faces in pursuing child-exploitation cases,
according to people familiar with the matter.
Asked about the messaging shift on Thursday at a news briefing,
a senior Justice Department official said encryption posed a
problem regardless of the type of crime. "My focus is on ensuring
the public is safe," the official said.
Past efforts to find a compromise -- such as installing
algorithmic filters on the front end of WhatsApp -- have been
rejected by Facebook.
"We would not pursue this approach," Facebook vice president
Will Cathcart wrote to Harvard University adjunct lecturer Bruce
Schneier in August, describing it as both technologically
problematic and vulnerable to government manipulation. Mr. Schneier
had written that he believed Facebook was pursuing that
approach.
The U.S. has a close intelligence-sharing relationship with the
U.K. and Australia -- as well as with Canada and New Zealand --
known as the Five Eyes. The English-speaking countries also
cooperate closely on law enforcement matters, and for years have
wrestled with how to collectively confront increasingly pervasive
encryption technology.
BuzzFeed News reported on Mr. Barr's letter Thursday.
Mr. Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray are among several senior
government officials scheduled to speak at a summit Friday about
the challenges faced by law enforcement due to encryption,
particularly as it relates to child exploitation.
At the news briefing, another senior Justice Department official
said the administration wasn't ready to discuss specific
legislative proposals.
There are steps that both sides of the encryption debate could
take to reach compromise, said Alex Stamos, Facebook's former chief
security officer. Facebook, for example, could use machine learning
or new identification technology to spot exploitative messages sent
within its encrypted systems.
That might weaken encryption, but it could address
law-enforcement concerns without giving governments unfettered
access to private information. "This is the start of a negotiation
that our society has to do between privacy and safety," he
said.
Write to Robert McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com and Dustin
Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 03, 2019 20:40 ET (00:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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