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Priti Patel is to introduce a new law to prevent Facebook and other social media firms from “intentionally blinding” themselves to “abhorrent” child abuse through encryption.
In an exclusive article for The Telegraph, the Home Secretary said that tech giants would not be allowed to use end-to-end encryption for messages and sharing content as an excuse for failing to protect children from abuse.
Under an amendment to the Online Safety Bill to be tabled on Wednesday, Ofcom will get powers to force Facebook and other tech firms to prevent, identify and remove encrypted child abuse content.
Firms that fail to introduce technology to mitigate the risks of encryption will face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global turnover and risk their services being shut down by the watchdog.