Barr and his British and Australian counterparts are set to send a joint letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, arguing that law enforcement needs a way to break the companies’ encryption to fight terrorism, international organized crime and child exploitations, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The New York Times that is dated Friday.
With 1.5 billion users, Facebook’s WhatsApp is perhaps the most commonly used encrypted communications platform in the world. Privacy advocates and tech company officials believe creating any such back door will effectively destroy the secrecy of the platforms, which are used by terrorist groups, drug cartels and legitimate government critics alike to exchange sensitive information they want to keep from investigators.
The move by Barr comes as President Donald Trump has pressed for the unmasking of the whistleblower who accused him of abusing his power in pushing Ukraine’s president to open investigations that could benefit him politically. Trump’s call for an investigation of the whistleblower complicates Barr’s push for Facebook to allow the government into its encryption system.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. BuzzFeed News first reported on Barr’s letter.
A Facebook spokesman said the company respects the role of law enforcement but believes people have a right to conduct private conversations online.
The Justice Department has long pushed technology companies to help the government gain access to information on electronic devices. The conflict last came to a head in 2016, when investigators obtained a court order that required Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone recovered after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015.
The FBI ultimately unlocked that phone without the help of Apple, easing tensions for a time with the tech companies.
Barr, who took office in February, has embraced the Justice Department’s push. In a speech in July, he called on tech companies to stop using advanced encryption that keeps out law enforcement officials.
The Justice Department and its counterparts in Australia and the United Kingdom have pushed for back doors to other tech platforms but are focusing on Facebook because of its plans to expand encryption across its platforms.
Barr was scheduled to deliver remarks Friday at a Justice Department summit on how encryption has stymied the government’s ability to access information, a problem that local and federal law enforcement agencies have coined “going dark.”
The summit will focus on the effect that strong technological encryption has on child exploitation cases. Christopher Wray, the FBI director, is also speaking and has pushed technology companies to cooperate more with law enforcement investigations.
The encryption on WhatsApp blocks Facebook from accessing the information its user send on the platform, similar to the system used by the Signal messaging service, considered to be one of the most thorough at protecting users’ privacy. Facebook has said it will expand its encryption system to Messenger and its other platforms, an expansion that Justice Department officials oppose.
Only platforms that use an encryption system that cannot be accessed by the company itself can be protected from hackers or governments seeking information about activity they consider criminal.
But in the letter to Facebook, Barr and the British and Australian officials said law enforcement must be able to unlock encryption systems to access information to “safeguard the public, investigate crimes and prevent future criminal activity.”
“Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes,” they wrote.
In the letter, the governments said they would seek to access Facebook and WhatsApp content only when public safety was at risk. It also said the governments recognize a right to privacy but Facebook should be able to provide access if a judge has issued a warrant.
British and Australian officials have also pushed even longer for back doors, stretching back years.
Barr’s work with Australia and Britain has also come under scrutiny as he has pressed for both countries’ cooperation with the Justice Department’s review of the origins of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
Tech company officials have said that strong encryption is necessary to protect legitimate users of their platforms, particularly journalists and government critics trying to pass along information about wrongdoing without law enforcement officials learning about it.
This article originally appeared in
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