WhatsApp Is A Vehicle For Illegal Content

Uploaded on 2024-08-23 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Social Media, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

Child sexual abuse imagery is spreading on WhatsApp, the Meta-owned end-to-end encrypted messaging platform. Indeed, has been a 25% increase in child abuse imagery recorded by the UK police in the last few years. 

Now, child protection campaigners are advocating  for changes to encryption that would give law enforcement agencies the ability to access these types of messages as part of efforts to fight the spread of illegal and abusive  material.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a child safety group, has accused WhatsApp's parent company, Meta, of failing to put the mechanisms in place necessary to stop the spread of such material on WhatsApp.

A counter argument is that secure messaging platforms are vital to protect vulnerable people, including younger users, and that there is currently no viable technology that could create a backdoor into encryption for law-enforcement, without ultimately breaking encryption and impacting user privacy and safety.

IWF has also said that new mechanisms are needed that might stop the spread of illegal material, like the content sent to the disgraced former BBC news presenter, Huw Edwards. In a recent Court, hearing Edwards admitted having indecent imagery of children, which were shared with him on WhatsApp.

Nobody outside the conversation is able to access encrypted messages, including the service provider. 

IWF is challenging Meta to do more to protect children and put mechanisms in place. Dan Sexton, IWF’s Chief Technology Officer, told the BBC that Meta was "choosing not to" ensure indecent imagery could not spread in the wake of the Edwards case. "I'd like to ask this question: how is Meta going to prevent this from happening again? What is stopping those images being shared again on that service today, tomorrow, and the next day?

In response, a WhatsApp spokesperson has defended the app's current safety measures, saying that other messaging apps "don’t have the safety measures we have developed." Furthermore, WhatsApp say that users have the "ability to report directly to WhatsApp so we can ban any user who shares this heinous material and report them" to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

This conflict is unlikely to go away, even following the introduction of specific child protection measures in the UK Online Safety legislation last year.

"Right now, there is nothing stopping those exact images and videos of those children being shared on that platform, even though we know about it, and they know about it, and the police know about it," IWF's Sexton said.

NSPCC   |  IWF   |   Google   |   BBC   |   Gaydio   |   Independent   |    Yahoo   |   

Image: Myriams-Fotos

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