Facebook is again central to a controversy with the government of the United States. This time, the Ministry of Justice wants the company to break through the end-to-end encryption of Messenger, the messaging application. The request is that the department hears calls from certain users of the application who are involved in the gang MS-13.
According to information from the Reuters news agency, the case is undercover in the California courts. This means that no document or information about the progress of the process can be disclosed to the public, but Facebook does not seem willing to cooperate with the government in the case.
The reasoning of Facebook is that since Messenger uses end-to-end encryption, the company does not have access to the requested data and should either handle the entire application or hack the specific devices of the people under investigation – things that company strongly refuses to do,
The case is very similar to the dispute that took place between the FBI and Apple in 2015 during the investigation into the San Bernardino bombing. At that time, the FBI wanted the company to unlock the phone from one of the parties involved in the attack, which was promptly refused by the company.
MS-13 is a Latin gang, mainly consisting of immigrants from El Salvador, who have been in the media for a long time. to be used by President Donald Trump as the main example of the problems that exist in the current immigration laws of the country.
Source: The Verge
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