A proposed bill in Florida that sought to mandate social media companies to implement an encryption backdoor for law enforcement access has been withdrawn and will not become law, TechCrunch reports.
The legislation, titled the Social Media Use by Minors bill, had advanced in the Florida Senate but was indefinitely postponed in the states House of Representatives, halting its progression. The measure would have required social platforms to create a means to decrypt end-to-end encrypted messages when presented with a subpoena. Critics emphasized that subpoenas can be issued without judicial approval, raising significant privacy and oversight concerns. The bill drew strong opposition from digital rights advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which warned that introducing such backdoors could undermine data security. Cybersecurity experts have long maintained that no secure backdoor exists that cannot also be exploited by malicious actors. They argue that any compromise to encryption could expose user data to breaches, surveillance, and unauthorized access.
The legislation, titled the Social Media Use by Minors bill, had advanced in the Florida Senate but was indefinitely postponed in the states House of Representatives, halting its progression. The measure would have required social platforms to create a means to decrypt end-to-end encrypted messages when presented with a subpoena. Critics emphasized that subpoenas can be issued without judicial approval, raising significant privacy and oversight concerns. The bill drew strong opposition from digital rights advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which warned that introducing such backdoors could undermine data security. Cybersecurity experts have long maintained that no secure backdoor exists that cannot also be exploited by malicious actors. They argue that any compromise to encryption could expose user data to breaches, surveillance, and unauthorized access.
