In the latest chapter of the crypto wars, last week the governments of the U.S., U.K., and Australia sent a letter to Facebook demanding that the company weaken the security of its messaging services. The Center for Democracy & Technology brought together over 110 organizations in opposition to the governments’ effort, and encouraged Facebook to continue rolling out end-to-end encryption across its product line. Our billions of communications each day are more secure because of encryption technologies.
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Want to learn more about why encryption matters? Join CDT and our partners on October 25 for a briefing on encryption and understanding its technical and human elements. You can register here.
More from CDT
Global freedom of expression: Not long before a series of episodes in which U.S. tech companies removed content linked to the Hong Kong protests, igniting global conversation about the bounds of free expression, the highest court of the European Union (CJEU) issued a decision in Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland. In this case, an Austrian politician demanded that Facebook proactively filter defamatory statements about her and her political party, and the CJEU found that Austrian courts are not prohibited from insisting that their defamation standards apply to all speech on a global platform.
Content hosts have traditionally aimed to ensure that the effects of countries’ most restrictive speech laws are felt primarily within national bounds, but the CJEU’s decision leaves the door open to global content-filtering orders. For more on why the decision demonstrated a distressing lack of technical analysis and poor consideration of broader freedom of expression principles, read Emma Llansó’s analysis here.
Save the date: The Future of Speech Online will take place on November 15, 2019, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The event will feature Tor Project Co-Founder Roger Dingeldine. You can find more information here — registration will open soon!
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