A global coalition of more than 100 sexual abuse survivors and child safety campaigners has written to the heads of major tech companies, including Meta, Snap, Apple and Signal, calling for more cooperation with abuse survivors when assessing child safety risks of new and current products – including end-to-end encrypted messaging services. End-to-end messaging – which prevents anyone but the sender and receiver from seeing the message – is under a particular microscope when it comes to child safety on tech platforms. Campaigners say it stops companies being able to monitor messages for abuse, while the companies say users’ privacy would be breached if they were to scan private messages for illegal content – and have threatened to pull out of countries if they are forced to do so. The campaigners’ letter comes as the UK’s Online Harms Bill moves through the final stages of parliament this week, while the government facing criticism for watering down enforcement powers for encrypted messaging.
