Mike Masnick points out that the recent New Mexico court ruling against Meta has some bad implications for end-to-end encryption, and security in general: If the “design choices create liability” framework seems worrying in the abstract, the New Mexico case provides a concrete example of where it leads in practice. One of the key pieces of evidence the New Mexico attorney general used against Meta was the company’s 2023 decision to add end-to-end encryption to Facebook Messenger. The argument went like this: predators used Messenger to groom minors and exchange child sexual abuse material. By encrypting those messages, Meta made it harder for law enforcement to access evidence of those crimes. Therefore, the encryption was a design choice that enabled harm...
  • AzuraTheSpellkissed@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9·
    8 hours ago

    the post already links to a summary, but tl;dr

    the state seeks to charge Meta for supporting grooming of minors, because adding chat encryption obstructed law enforcement. Criminalizing the design decision to add encryption might deter all companies.

    Some of the most damaging evidence in both trials came from internal company documents where employees raised concerns about safety risks and discussed tradeoffs. […] the rational corporate response is to stop putting anything in writing. Stop doing risk assessments. Stop asking hard questions internally. […] That makes everyone less safe.