Encrypted messaging could increase child abuse cases, report warns
The Commissioner's report follows announcements by Facebook - and indications by other social platforms, such as Snap - that they plan to apply E2EE to all their messaging services.
The Commissioner said that E2EE makes it impossible for the platform itself to read the contents of messages and risks preventing police and prosecutors from gathering the evidence they need to prosecute perpetrators of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
In January 2020, the NSPCC said that the number of child abuse cases had risen to 90 per day and called for regulators to tackle the issue.
