Irish child protection groups urging Facebook to scrap plans for end-to-end encryption amid concerns about – The Irish Sun

IRISH child protection groups are urging Facebook to scrap its plans to introduce end-to-end encryption amid concerns about grooming on the platform.

CyberSafeIreland said the proposed introduction of encryption by the social networking giant would make it impossible to detect and remove child abuse material.

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The plea comes as Facebook investors were being urged to back a vote against end-to-end encryption plans next week by activist investors.

This encryption would allow for only the sender and recipient of a message to read or modify what has been sent in a conversation.

In 2019, there were nearly 17 million reports of child sexual abuse material online with almost 94 per cent coming from Facebook, according to Michael Passoff, chief of Proxy Impact, a shareholder advocacy and proxy voting service.

CEO of CyberSafeIreland Alex Cooney said the group was shocked with the level of child abuse images on the social media site, headed by Mark Zuckerberg.

She told the Irish Sun: Im surprised there is such a concentration on the FB platform.

But with the marked increase in child exploitation online since the Covid-19 crisis began, we shouldnt be surprised that people involved in this kind of activity will use any platform they can if its possible to perpetuate this kind of behaviour.

If encryption is introduced, it would make it impossible to detect and remove this kind of material from that platform, which is not acceptable.

Cooney said the platforms have a responsibility to detect and remove illegal and harmful material of this nature as part of their commitment to child safeguarding.

She added: Its also vital that they can provide evidence to law enforcement for victim identification and child protection reasons.

Cooney said her group would demand the tech giant cease end-to-end encryption plans. She said: They have a huge responsibility to lead the way on child protection measures and to do everything they can to remove this kind of material from their platforms as soon as possible.

How can they uphold the many public commitments to child safety they have made in this regard if encryption is introduced?

The ISPCC said encryption would not help in the bid to protect young online users.

An ISPCC spokesperson said: Encrypted services can offer a much-needed level of protection in some instances.

However, any feature that can potentially facilitate harms against children and possibly impede the detection of these harms would not be helpful in the pursuit of protecting children online.

The vote is being presented at the Facebook annual general meeting on May 27.

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Facebook Head of Safety David Miles said: Strong encryption is critically important to keep everyone safe from hackers and criminals.

Protecting children online is critically important to this effort and we are committed to building strong safety measures into our plans.

We are working closely with child safety experts, law enforcement, governments and other tech companies to help keep children safe online.

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Irish child protection groups urging Facebook to scrap plans for end-to-end encryption amid concerns about - The Irish Sun