New Delhi: Meta (formerly Facebook) will not introduce end-to-end encryption for chats on its flagship messaging platform Messenger and Instagram until 2023, according to an article by Antigone Davis, the company's head of safety, published on The Sunday Telegraph.
Davis wrote in The Sunday Telegraph, "We're taking our time to get this right and we don't plan to finish the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023."
This statement differs from the commitment made in April by the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company that it would make chats on Facebook and Instagram Messenger end-to-end encrypted by 2022 at the earliest, according to Davis, media reports mentioned.
WhatsApp messaging app, already uses end-to-end encryption and Facebook Messenger has encrypted voice and video calls only.
In 2019, Zuckerberg had announced that all of the company's messaging services' infrastructure will be merged to use encryption.
“People expect their private communications to be secure and to only be seen by the people they’ve sent them to – not hackers, criminals, over-reaching governments or even the people operating the services they’re using,” media reports had quoted Zuckerberg as saying.
Meta In A Legal Battle
Since 2019, Meta has been fighting a legal battle over end-to-end encryption on its services in the UK. The UK's Home Secretary Priti Patel, in 2019, had said Meta should bring changes to its messaging services, such that law enforcement can access people's end-to-end encrypted chats, along with officials from the Five intelligence alliance comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to media reports.
However, Meta says end-to-end encryption is necessary to ensure user safety, and that metadata can help law enforcement identify criminals.
Metadata is data about data, and enriches the data with information that makes it easier to find, use and manage. It does not relate to the actual contents of a message.
She also wrote, "We believe people shouldn't have to choose between privacy and safety, which is why we are building strong safety measures into our plans and engaging with privacy and safety experts, civil society and governments to make sure we get this right."
She said Meta, using non-encrypted data, account information and reports from users, would be able to detect abuse under its encryptions plans. “Our recent review of some historic cases showed that we would still have been able to provide critical information to the authorities, even if those services had been end-to-end encrypted,” Davis wrote in the article.
What Is End-to-end Encryption?
End-to-end encryption is a method of securing information that prevents third parties from accessing data while it is transferred from one system or device to another.
Only the intended recipient can decrypt a message which is end-to-end encrypted, because the data is encrypted on the sender's system.
Internet service providers, telecom providers, or providers of the communication service cannot tamper with the message while it is traveling to its destination.