Late last night, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) joined other organizations in urging a Nevada district court to reject the effort of the Nevada attorney general to prevent people in Nevada from using an end-to-end encrypted messaging service by if they are under the age of 18. We signed onto a brief, led by ACLU, EFF and research scholar Riana Pfefferkorn, urging the Court to reject Nevada’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would bar Meta from offering encrypted messaging services to youth in Nevada. Nevada’s assault on encryption is extraordinary and without precedent: it is suing a tech company to deny an entire class of users the ability to communicate securely using its encrypted messaging app. 

We pointed out that end-to-end encryption is essential to secure communications on the inherently insecure Internet, and that it has been available by default for years from other messaging services, such as Signal and Apple’s iMessage. Meta began to roll out E2EE by default on Messenger late last year, and had offered E2EE since 2016 to those who opted in.

We also explained that denying children the opportunity to use E2EE encrypted messaging services does not protect them; it exposes them to danger. When a teenager confides with their parents and their friends sensitive information about their health, their fears, their activities, and who they are with and where they are going, the communications containing that information must be secured by encryption to promote child safety. 

CDT has long supported encryption, and is a founding member of the Global Encryption Coalition, which counts among its members other amici including the lead drafters, the Internet Society, Mozilla, Signal, Access Now, and Fight for the Future.

Read our brief.