What’s the news: In an open letter addressed “to anyone who cares about safety and privacy on the internet,” WhatsApp and other end-to-end (E2E) encryption messenger apps raised privacy concerns about the UK’s Online Safety Bill. Particularly, they contested the Bill’s provisions to weaken E2E security measures. “As currently drafted, the Bill could break end-to-end encryption, opening the door to routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages of friends, family members, employees, executives, journalists, human rights activists and even politicians themselves, which would fundamentally undermine everyone’s ability to communicate securely,” said signatories. What is the Online Safety Bill? First presented in the House of Commons on March 17, 2022, the Online Safety Bill talks about “provision for and in connection with the regulation by OFCOM [the UK’s communication ministry] of certain internet services; for and in connection with communications offences; and for connected purposes.” According to Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Element – an E2E encryption messenger app – and one of the signatories of the open letter, the bill requires encrypted messaging apps to scan for abusive content within the app (or its underlying operating system). “This fundamentally undermines encryption, by providing a mechanism that can be hijacked and abused to access arbitrary user data. It is the online equivalent of installing a CCTV camera into everyone’s bedroom, hooked up to an artificial intelligence (AI) classifier which sends footage back to the authorities whenever it thinks it sees something illegal happening,” he said in his blogpost. Why it matters: E2E…
