The US, UK and Australia have asked Facebook to provide a backdoor for law enforcement at the planned Messenger service encryption. This is important to protect children from violence and sexual abuse, said the governments in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In 2018 alone, Facebook reported nearly 17 million cases of possible child abuse. With the planned encryption would have been around 12 million cases but probably not noticed, as it said in the letter according to the US Department of Homeland Security Thursday (local time).

Facebook wants to encrypt its messaging service messenger in the future more. With the so-called “end-to-end” encryption, the company would no longer have access to the messages sent and encrypted directly by a user to another user. Thus, Facebook could no longer access the news even in court-ordered monitoring or search warrants.

This barrier could allow criminals to avoid prosecution because important evidence was hidden, the letter says. For the US government, the document signed Justice Secretary William Barr and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. However, many privacy advocates see stronger encryption as an advantage because all conversation content is better protected against unauthorized access.