• Florida lawmakers rejected SB 868/HB 743, which sought to force social media companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement, grant parents access to minors’ private messages and ban disappearing messages for minors.
• Proponents claimed the bill would protect children from predators and harmful content by increasing surveillance and parental oversight.
• Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), warned that weakening encryption would jeopardize all users’ security, exposing data to hackers, governments and criminals.
• Experts emphasized that end-to-end encryption cannot be selectively bypassed – creating a backdoor would inherently undermine security for everyone, including minors.
• The bill stalled in the House and was withdrawn, but privacy groups caution that similar legislation may reappear in other states under the guise of “child safety.”

Florida lawmakers have rejected a controversial bill that would have required social media companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement.

The defeated bill, Senate Bill 868/House Bill 743 (Social Media Use By Minors), sought to compel platforms to provide decryption mechanisms for law enforcement with a warrant, grant parents access to private messages of minors and ban minors from using disappearing messages. (Related: Florida’s social media laws spark debate over minors’ privacy and digital safety.)

Supporters argued the measures would protect children from online predators and harmful content. However, critics warned that weakening encryption would expose all users, not just minors, to security risks. Privacy experts warn that the bill’s requirements are technically unworkable.

End-to-end encryption is designed so that only the sender and recipient can read messages – not even the platform itself has access. Creating a backdoor for law enforcement would inevitably weaken security for everyone, including adults communicating with minors.

“As the fear-mongering campaign against encryption is being reiterated over and over again, it’s worth repeating – there is no known way of undermining encryption for any one category of users, without leaving the entire internet open and at the mercy of anything from government spies to plain criminals. And that affects both people’s communications and transactions.

“Not to mention that while framing such radical proposals as needed for a declaratively equally large goal to achieve – the safety of youth online – in reality, by shuttering encryption, young people and everyone else are negatively affected. If anything, it would make everyone online less secure, and, by nature of the world – young people more so than others,” Didi Rankovic wrote in his article for Reclaim the Net.

Recent breaches, such as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack, demonstrate that backdoors cannot be reserved solely for “good guys.” Once a vulnerability exists, it can be exploited by criminals, foreign governments or malicious actors.

Fortunately, SB 868/HB 743 stalled in the House of Representatives on May 2, leading to its official withdrawal on May 3, despite passage in the Senate.

EFF celebrates the defeat of SB 868/HB 743 in Florida

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading digital rights organization, celebrated the defeat of SB 868/HB 743, calling the proposal “dangerous and dumb.”

“This bill should set off serious alarm bells for anyone who cares about digital rights, secure communication or simply the ability to message someone privately without the government listening… In short: if your kid loses their right to encrypted communication, so does everyone they talk to,” the EFF wrote.

“Encryption is one of the most important tools we have to protect privacy online. Florida’s SB 868 (“Social Media Use By Minors” bill) intends to completely undermine it while also putting the privacy and safety of young people at risk.”

With SB 868/HB 743 defeated, privacy advocates have secured an important win. However, they warn that similar legislation could resurface in other states under the guise of “child protection.”

Learn more about the expansion of surveillance states at Surveillance.news.

Watch this video of cybersecurity and tech expert Rob Braxman discussing how Apple has a backdoor to bypass encryption.

This video is from the channel Pool Pharmacy on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

End-to-end encryption debate draws attention to child sex abuse.

NSA pays tech companies millions to engineer backdoors into encryption protocols.

The Crypto AG Scandal: How American and German spy agencies turned encryption into espionage.

Privacy under siege: Europol and the UK Crime Agency target encryption, call for backdoors.

Leaked documents: Socialist Spain wants the EU to ban all end-to-end encryption.

Sources include:

ReclaimtheNet.org

EFF.org

TechRadar.com

Vice.com

Brighteon.com