A law firm representing Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has asked a state court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) denying minors access to encrypted communications on Meta’s Messenger application. .
The TRO filing follows AG Ford’s announcement on January 30, 2024, that it will file a civil lawsuit against five social media companies, including Meta. [PDF]alleging that these companies deceptively marketed their services to young people through algorithms designed to promote addiction.
Nevada joined 42 states in October last year over claims that the social media companies intentionally ignored evidence that Facebook and Instagram’s services contributed to psychological harm in children and teens. He was not a party to the two multidistrict lawsuits filed by the attorney general against Mehta. Meta, which has recently invested in virtual reality and large-scale language models, is also being sued by hundreds of school districts across the country.
The TRO filing in Nevada state court follows AG Ford’s initial complaint. The legal claim alleges that Meta’s provision of end-to-end encryption for Messenger “exposed child sexual abuse content without exception, putting millions of children at grave risk.” The report quotes a statement from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
But the first complaint’s supposedly supporting claims are redacted in publicly available copies of the document.
The TRO’s motion also includes redactions, alleging that by encrypting Messenger, Meta obstructed state authorities from enforcing Nevada’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
“With this motion, the state seeks to prohibit Meta from using end-to-end encryption (also known as ‘E2EE’) for young users’ Messenger communications within Nevada,” the court filing states. It is stated in.
“This practice makes it impossible for anyone other than the sender and recipient of a private message to know the information contained in the message, and serves as an important tool for child predators and is an important tool for committing crimes against persons. “Significantly hinders law enforcement efforts to protect children from violent online crimes, including human trafficking, predation, and other forms of dangerous exploitation.”
Meta enabled E2EE by default for all Messenger users in December 2023. However, according to the TRO’s motion, “Meta’s end-to-end encryption hinders Nevada law enforcement efforts, causes unnecessary delays, and even risks theft of critical parts” of evidence needed for criminal prosecution. collect. ”
If the injunction is granted, Meta will be required to disable E2EE for all Messenger users under the age of 18 in Nevada. Presumably, minors using Messenger who are visiting the Silver State will also be affected.
“I believe this is the biggest attack on encryption in the United States since 2016,” Liana Pfefferkorn, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said in a post on Mastodon.
That year, the FBI, which had long complained that encryption kept law enforcement in the dark, tried to force Apple to develop a version of iOS to circumvent iPhone encryption. The U.S. Department of Justice ultimately backed off after the federal government gained access to the devices in question through a private security firm. But government officials’ desire for encryption that isn’t encrypted to the right people goes back decades to the Clipper chip fight and lives on in proposals like Europe’s Chat Control.
“What they seem to be objecting to is actually encryption that just prevents real-time interception,” said Matt Blais, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University who discovered the Clipper chip flaw in 1994. It is noteworthy that there is no such thing.” The failure to record what was supposed to be a temporary communication in a confidential, permanent third-party record for the convenience of future law enforcement investigations. ”
Pfefferkorn said. register “Banning end-to-end encryption for online communications for Nevada’s children, and only Nevada’s children, would harm, not help, the safety of children. Nevada’s children.” Banning E2EE in our state means giving E2EE opportunities to some of our state’s most vulnerable residents.”Digital privacy and cybersecurity better than anyone else.”
“The FTC and other state attorneys general, such as California, have long made clear that it is a consumer protection violation for companies to fail to provide their users with adequate digital privacy and security, and strong encryption is It is a puzzling reversal for the Nevada Attorney General to argue here that meth violates the Nevada Consumer Protection Act.”
A public hearing to consider the motion began on Monday, but a decision had not yet been made at the time this article was filed.
Mehta and Attorney General Ford’s office did not respond to requests for comment. ®
