Florida’s Proposed Encryption Backdoor Bill for Minors Faces Industry Backlash 

• Florida’s recently proposed bill on weakening encryption for underage users is raising concerns.
• The bill mandates backdoors and parental access for minors’ social media accounts.
• It also proposes removing disappearing messages for users under 18 years of age in apps that offer this feature.

A recently proposed Florida bill, "Social Media Use by Minors" (SB 868), is garnering significant controversy for mandating encryption backdoors and parental access to minors’ accounts, as well as banning disappearing message features for users under 18.

The bill, which cleared a committee vote and now heads to the Senate floor, requires social media companies to implement mechanisms allowing law enforcement to decrypt end-to-end encrypted communications upon presentation of a subpoena. 

It has drawn sharp criticism from technology companies and digital rights organizations, who argue that forced backdoors would undermine encryption, posing severe risks to user privacy and cybersecurity. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been particularly vocal, describing the legislation as "dangerous and dumb" in a blog post. 

They emphasized that encryption is a critical tool for ensuring secure communications online. By making exceptions to encryption protocols, the bill could expose all users to vulnerabilities, leading to heightened risks of data breaches and cyberattacks.  

Encryption plays a pivotal role in safeguarding sensitive data, including personal communications, bank information, and health records. 

Companies like Apple, Google, and Meta have progressively adopted widespread end-to-end encryption across their platforms as it ensures no one—including the companies themselves or malicious actors—can access private user data.  

The Florida bill suggests that compliance with a subpoena would be sufficient for law enforcement to access encrypted communications. However, subpoenas typically do not require judicial oversight and are more limited in the scope of data they can request.  

Furthermore, weakening encryption for minors may prompt companies to eliminate encryption for younger users entirely, predict digital rights advocates. This creates potential loopholes for abuse and exploitation of their data, contradicting the intended goal of the bill to protect minors.  

Proposals like Florida’s often raise fundamental questions about balancing privacy, user safety, and law enforcement capabilities. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also signed a law last year restricting social media use for individuals under 16, though the statute has been stalled in court as its constitutionality is under review.  

Several legal experts and technologists have noted that enforcing encryption backdoors in specific jurisdictions could lead to a fragmented internet ecosystem. This might prompt companies to limit offerings in such states entirely, as compliance on a regional basis would be both logistically and financially burdensome.