Florida’s legally mandatory encryption backdoor is charged to social media accounts as “dangerous and stupid”
The Florida bill, which requires social media companies to provide cryptographic backdoors for law enforcement officials to access user accounts, clears key legislative hurdles and advances to the state senator’s floor for a vote.
Florida lawmakers unanimously approved pushing the bill through the committee; Florida politics.
“Using social media by minors” (SB 868) The bill, if passed to the law, requires a social media platform to provide a mechanism for deciphering end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena. “The bill also requires social media companies to allow parents or guardians to access their child’s accounts and prohibits them from using features that allow children to use messaging that will destroy their child’s accounts, the bill reads.
Critics, including tech companies and industry organisations oppose the bill, have long argued that weakening encryption can reduce the security of private messages, leading to data breaches.
in Last week’s blog postthe Digital Rights Group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticised the bill, arguing that encryption is “the best tool we need to protect communications online,” and that if the law passes, companies are likely to remove minor encryption and reduce the security of users.
“The idea that Florida can ‘protect’ minors by making them safe is dangerous and stupid,” EFF writes.
The Florida bill is built on state law passed last year and restricts social media for people under the age of 16. Under scrutiny in court In a question regarding the constitutionality of the law.
Tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook owner meta are increasingly End-to-end encryption With your data, private content is accessible to you and even to the company itself. This also helps to protect users’ private messages from hackers and malicious company insiders. By encrypting user data, tech companies say they cannot provide law enforcement with information they themselves have no access to.
As written, it is not clear whether the proposed Florida bill would require social media companies to comply with the subpoena alone. This is usually issued by law enforcement agencies and without judicial supervision.
Although subpoena are not usually signed by judges, they can still be used by law enforcement agencies to enforce a limited amount of account information, such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers about users, about them. Companies often require police to request that the court present suspected evidence of the crime before taking over a user’s private message.
a Corresponding invoice Passing through the Florida House (HB 743), there will be a final committee vote to clear before proceeding to the House floor for each Florida politics.