FACEBOOK bosses have chosen to “blind themselves” to the child sexual abuse happening on the site by encrypting messaging services, secret Home Office advise warns.
The move poses a “catastrophic risk” to kids and could mean over 30 million instances of abuse around the world go unnoticed by cops every year.
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The bombshell warning was given to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in November last year ahead of an online meeting she held with bosses of Meta, which owns Facebook.
Nick Clegg – the former Lib Dem leader and senior Facebook boss who quit the firm earlier this year – was among those at the meeting.
The advice – handed over in a factsheet – states: “The adoption of end-to-end encryption by Meta is an exemplar of the catastrophic risks posed by high-risk design choices, given the company has effectively opted to blind itself to the abhorrent abuse occurring on its platforms.”
Meta started rolling out end to end encryption about a year ago.
The stark warning comes after the National Crime Agency raised the alarm that the move would make it far harder for them to protect kids online.
In the advice, officials also suggested the government’s Online Safety Act lacks the teeth to quickly crack down on tech giants failing to protect kids online.
It states: “Despite the significant risks posed by Meta’s actions HMG [His Majesty’s Government] currently has yet to harness the limited levers at HMG disposal to compel the company to act.
“Whilst the Online Safety Act notionally provides Ofcom with powers to compel companies to develop detection technologies, the powers are only exercisable at the end of a lengthy regulatory process and would take a few years to deploy.”
They said Meta was an industry leader in the use of “proactive” technology to find and report online grooming and child sexual exploitation.
Tech companies reported 36 million instances of child sexual abuse worldwide in 2023 alone – with 31m of them on Meta platforms.
But encryption totally undermines the ability to find this appalling content, officials warned.
Last week Peter Kyle, the Cabinet minister for Science and Technology, has said online safety legislation is “unsatisfactory” and “uneven” and more legislation may be needed.
A Meta spokesman: “End-to-end encryption is one of the most important technologies to keep everyone safe online, including young people.
“No one wants us reading their private messages, so we’ve developed robust safety measures to prevent and combat abuse while maintaining online security.”
A government spokesman said: “All social media companies, including Meta, have a responsibility to apply the necessary safeguards to the use of end-to-end encryption, so that they are able to detect child abuse.
“The use of a particular technology or platform design should never preclude the effective protection of children.
“This government is committed to using all available levers, including the Online Safety Act, to ensure children are protected online, and we will not hesitate to go further if necessary.”
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