The Florida bill, which requires social media companies to provide encryption backgrounds for law enforcement officials to access user accounts, clears key legislative hurdles and advances to the state senator’s floor for votes.
Florida lawmakers unanimously approved a push for the bill through the committee for each Florida politics.
The “Use of Social Media by Minors” (SB 868) bill, when passed to the law, requires a social media platform to provide a mechanism for law enforcement to decipher end-to-end encryption when it obtains a subpoena.” The bill also requires social media companies to allow parents or guardians to access their child’s accounts and prohibits them from using features that allow children to use messaging that will destroy their child’s accounts, the bill reads.
Critics, including tech companies and industry organisations oppose the bill, have long argued that weakening encryption can reduce the security of private messages, leading to data breaches.
In a blog post last week, the digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the bill, claiming that encryption is “the best tool to protect communications online,” and that if the law passes, companies are likely to remove encryption for minors and reduce the security of users.
“The idea that Florida can ‘protect’ minors by making them safe is dangerous and stupid,” EFF writes.
The Florida bill is built on state law last year that restricts social media for people under the age of 16. The law is primarily pending while under scrutiny in courts in questions about the constitutionality of the law.
Tech companies like Apple, Google and Meta are end-to-end encrypting their data, making private content accessible to users and even the companies themselves. This also helps to protect users’ private messages from hackers and malicious company insiders. By encrypting user data, tech companies say they cannot provide law enforcement with information they themselves have no access to.
As written, it is not clear whether the proposed Florida bill would require social media companies to comply with the subpoena alone. This is usually issued by law enforcement agencies and without judicial supervision.
Subpoises are not usually signed by judges, but they can still be used by law enforcement agencies to enforce a limited amount of account information about a user, such as the name, email address, and phone number of a high-tech company. Companies often require police to request that the court present suspected evidence of the crime before taking over a user’s private message.
The corresponding bill passing through the Florida House (HB 743) has a final committee vote to clear before proceeding to the House floor for the vote, according to Florida politics.