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Florida lawmakers are looking to mandate encryption backdoors on social media platforms to allow law enforcement to access user accounts.
The Social Media Use by Minors (SB 868) bill, as well as allowing parents and guardians to access child social media accounts and restrict child account abilities, intends to force social media companies to “provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena”.
However, the tech industry argues that adding social media backdoors only reduces the security of social media users, making data branches more likely and infringing on their privacy.
Social media platforms and tech giants are increasingly adopting end-to-end encrypting user data to prevent their messages and data from reaching the hands of cyber criminals. However, this prevents the company from accessing the data, as well as any law enforcement.
Florida’s backdoor “solution” would allow law enforcement to access that data.
However, despite Florida’s push to add backdoors, the US has heavily critiqued UK attempts to create an encryption backdoor in Apple systems for the same reason earlier this year. President Donald Trump called it “something that you hear about with China”, whilst US Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Andy Biggs said a backdoor for the UK government would undermine American privacy.
These reported actions seriously threaten the privacy and security of both the American people and the US government,” a letter to US director of intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said.
“Apple does not make different versions of its encryption software for each market; Apple customers in the UK use the same software as Americans.
“If Apple is forced to build a backdoor in its products, that backdoor will end up in Americans’ phones, tablets, and computers, undermining the security of Americans’ data, as well as of the countless federal, state and local government agencies that entrust sensitive data to Apple products.”
Apple has also appealed the UK government’s decision in a hearing that was held privately, despite the US and lawmakers demanding it be held public.
Despite the US concerns, the Social Media Use by Minors bill passed the first hurdle to becoming law unanimously.
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