A Florida draft invoice that will require social media corporations to supply encryption backdoors for regulation enforcement officers to entry person accounts has cleared a key legislative hurdle and can now advance to the state’s Senate flooring for a vote.
Florida lawmakers unanimously authorized pushing the invoice by means of committee, per Florida Politics.
The “Social Media Use by Minors” (SB 868) invoice, if handed into regulation, would require “social media platforms to supply a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when regulation enforcement obtains a subpoena.” The invoice would additionally require social media corporations to permit dad and mom or guardians entry to a baby’s account, and would prohibit little one accounts from utilizing options that enable using disappearing messaging, the invoice reads.
Critics, together with the tech corporations and business organizations that oppose the invoice, have lengthy argued that weakening encryption would make folks much less secure by compromising the safety of their non-public messages, and will end in information breaches.
In a weblog publish final week, the digital rights group Digital Frontier Basis criticized the invoice, arguing that encryption is the “finest software we have now to guard our communications on-line,” and that passing the regulation would doubtless end in corporations eradicating encryption for minors and making these customers much less secure.
“The concept Florida can ‘shield’ minors by making them much less secure is harmful and dumb,” wrote the EFF.
The Florida invoice builds on a state regulation handed final 12 months limiting social media for folks underneath the age of 16. The regulation stays largely on maintain whereas it stays underneath scrutiny within the courts amid questions in regards to the regulation’s constitutionality.
Tech corporations, like Apple, Google, and Meta, are more and more end-to-end encrypting their customers’ information in order that their non-public content material is just accessible to the person, not even the businesses themselves. This additionally helps to guard customers’ non-public messages from hackers or malicious firm insiders. By encrypting person information, the tech corporations say in addition they can’t present regulation enforcement with info that they themselves can’t entry.
It’s not clear if the proposed Florida invoice, as written, would require social media corporations to adjust to solely a subpoena, that are sometimes issued by regulation enforcement businesses and with out judicial oversight.
Subpoenas are often not signed by a decide however can nonetheless be utilized by regulation enforcement to compel restricted quantities of account info, similar to names, electronic mail addresses, or cellphone numbers, from tech corporations about their customers. Firms will typically demand to see a court-authorized search warrant, which requires police to current a court docket with the next diploma of proof of suspected criminality, earlier than turning over a person’s non-public messages.
A corresponding invoice going by means of the Florida Home (HB 743) has a remaining committee vote to clear earlier than it’ll proceed to the Home flooring for a vote, per Florida Politics.
