A Florida draft invoice that will require social media corporations to supply encryption backdoors for legislation 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 accredited pushing the invoice by means of committee, per Florida Politics.
The “Social Media Use by Minors” (SB 868) invoice, if handed into legislation, would require “social media platforms to supply a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when legislation enforcement obtains a subpoena.” The invoice would additionally require social media corporations to permit mother and father or guardians entry to a baby’s account, and would prohibit youngster 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 protected by compromising the safety of their personal messages, and will lead to knowledge breaches.
In a weblog submit final week, the digital rights group Digital Frontier Basis criticized the invoice, arguing that encryption is the “finest software we now have to guard our communications on-line,” and that passing the legislation would possible lead to corporations eradicating encryption for minors and making these customers much less protected.
“The concept that Florida can ‘shield’ minors by making them much less protected is harmful and dumb,” wrote the EFF.
The Florida invoice builds on a state legislation handed final 12 months proscribing social media for folks underneath the age of 16. The legislation stays largely on maintain whereas it stays underneath scrutiny within the courts amid questions concerning the legislation’s constitutionality.
Tech corporations, like Apple, Google, and Meta, are more and more end-to-end encrypting their customers’ knowledge in order that their personal content material is simply accessible to the person, not even the businesses themselves. This additionally helps to guard customers’ personal messages from hackers or malicious firm insiders. By encrypting person knowledge, the tech corporations say additionally they can’t present legislation enforcement with data 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 legislation enforcement companies and with out judicial oversight.
Subpoenas are normally not signed by a decide however can nonetheless be utilized by legislation enforcement to compel restricted quantities of account data, resembling names, e-mail addresses, or telephone numbers, from tech corporations about their customers. Corporations 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 personal messages.
A corresponding invoice going by means of the Florida Home (HB 743) has a closing committee vote to clear earlier than it can proceed to the Home flooring for a vote, per Florida Politics.