WhatsApp and Signal protest against British law on scanning for child pornography

Chat apps WhatsApp and Signal and top people from various other messaging services have sent an open letter to the British government about an upcoming law. This would require messaging services to scan messages for child abuse content.

The companies call in the letter to change the law, because in its current form it would break the security of chat apps. “In short, the bill poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every citizen of the United Kingdom and the people with whom they interact. It encourages other hostile governments to try to enact such laws as well.” The letter was signed by top executives from WhatsApp, Session, Signal, Element, Threema, Viber and Wire.

A spokesman for the British government says to the BBC that assumption is incorrect. “The bill does not ban end-to-end encryption, and it will not require services to weaken encryption.” The bill does require the services to automatically scan messages for child abuse material. Apple wanted to put that system in iOS 15 with a scan on the phone itself, but has withdrawn that plan after a lot of internal and external criticism of the plan. Many chat platforms use end-to-end encryption to secure chats so that people can safely communicate with each other.

The basis of Apple Private Set Intersection, the technique the company wants to use to scan images