Facebook, Inc (NASDAQ:FB) may defy directives by governments in the UK, US, and Australia. These governments want the social media giant to give them a backdoor into the private conversations of users on the platform. Facebook remains opposed to rolling back the end-to-end encryption, and it has its reasons. It says that it would be unwise to let law enforcement circumvent encryption.
Facebook and its take on the matter
It is a tough balancing act for the company, which is torn into two. It needs to decide what matters more for it between safety and privacy. Meanwhile, pressure continues to pile. In its defense, the social media guru says that all its users are entitled to hold private conversations. This controversy between Facebook and these governments is the impact of digital communication making its way into the mass market.
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has been one of the forces to reckon with for Facebook and other major companies. This official sometime back said that Facebook and others had been going against the terms and conditions of their business principles. For instance, Snowden blew a whistle, complaining that humans were at times used in processes that were to be automated.
Later on, this whistleblower spoke about what intelligence services in the US and the UK were capable of. According to him, these intelligence services could intercept communication on a mass scale.
Why the controversy rages now
Some of the parties interested in the matter want to know why the two sides are into this controversy. A person well conversant with the matter, but who wants his identity kept anonymous makes important revelations. He speaks about the historic agreement between the US and the UK. The two want to give each other a leeway to catch private conversations much faster than it has been before. In the best-case scenario, they might be cut down on time from months or years to even weeks or days. However, if they can’t be able to read scrambled messages, then this might turn out to be an exercise in futility.
Facebook wants to continue policing its content, and it seems it won’t agree to the new arrangement. The only way it will agree to this will be only if something drastic happens.
