INSTAGRAM appears to be entering the final stages of its controversial plan to encrypt messages on its platform.
A screengrab shared online on Tuesday showed a screengrab of the new feature in action on an Instagram account based in India.
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Some users in the South Asian country are now able to activate end-to-end encryption in their IG Direct chats as part of ongoing tests.
The change, which is expected to be rolled out in full next year, masks messages so that only the sender and receiver can read them.
Even Meta, the company that owns Instagram, is blocked from viewing the content of people’s chats.
It’s a move that some have championed as a victory for user privacy while cops have branded it a “free pass” to crooks.
That’s because encryption would prevent security services from gaining access to anyone’s messages.
Meta announced the expansion of its end-to-end encryption test last month.
“Last year, we started a limited test of opt-in end-to-end encrypted messages and calls on Instagram, and in February we broadened the test to include adults in Ukraine and Russia,” the firm said.
“Soon, we’ll expand the test even further to include people in more countries and add more features like group chats.”
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The firm recently delayed its plans to roll out encryption until 2023 after child safety campaigners warned its proposals would shield child abusers from detection.
The UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has said private messaging is the “frontline of child sexual abuse online.”
Messages sent on Meta-owned WhatsApp are already encrypted and the feature is optional on Facebook Messenger.
However, the privacy tool is not available to everyone on Instagram just yet.
In 2019, the firm pledged to “merge” the behind-the-scenes messaging tech that powers Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.
The idea is that users would message one another across its platforms. A WhatsApp user could seamlessly chat to an Instagrammer, for example.
This would also mean encrypting messages sent on all platforms – rather than just WhatsApp.
End-to-end encryption means your message is garbled into gibberish during transit, and can only be read in its true form by the sender and recipient.
That’s because the contacts involved in the chat each have a “key” that decodes the message.
Anyone else (including Meta) is unable to read the encrypted text.
It’s an important privacy feature, and already one of the defining features of WhatsApp.
Last year, MI5 boss Ken McCallum blasted Meta’s encryption plans for giving what he said was a “free pass” to criminals.
“Decisions taken in California boardrooms are every bit as relevant to our ability to do our jobs as decisions taken in Afghanistan or Syria,” McCallum explained during an interview on Times Radio.
He warned that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg was creating digital living rooms that could be exploited.
“Our job is to deal with a one-in-a-million case, where the living room is a terrorist living room,” the spy chief said.
McCallum went on: “If you have end-to-end default encryption with absolutely no means of unwrapping that encryption.
“You are in effect giving those rare people – terrorists or people who are organising child sexual abuse online, some of the worst people in our society – a free pass.
“Where they know that nobody can see into what they are doing in those private living rooms.”
In response, a Meta spokesperson said that the firm has “no tolerance” for terrorism or child exploitation on its platforms.
They added that safety measures such as the tracking of behavioural patterns and user reports will be used to combat such abuse.
The US in 2020 joined the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada in a call to give local law enforcement backdoor encryption access.
That would allow cops to view encrypted messages and files if a warrant is issued.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
