United Kingdom: Published Guidance on End-to-end encryption and child safety including request to social media platforms

On 20 September 2023, the UK Government published a Guidance on End-to-end encryption and child safety. The Guidance describes the functioning and uses of End-to-end encryption (E2EE) and its implications for child safety on online platforms. The Guidance also includes a request to social media platforms, and especially Meta, which plans to implement E2EE for the direct messaging functions of its platforms Facebook and Instagram, to implement sufficient safety measures to protect children from sexual abuse. The government argues that the implementation of E2EE on Instagram and Facebook Messenger without any additional measures for the protection of child abuse appropriate to the new technology endangers the safety of children online and weakens the fight against online child abuse.