Encryption and children’s rights: Why is this a debate?
The debate on encryption and children’s rights is often divided between approaches focused on preventing child abuse, versus an emphasis on civil liberties. But this polarisation hides the fact that children’s rights are on both sides of the discourse. Finding common ground is essential to ensuring that children’s rights are protected.
Encryption is everywhere. When you access a secure website, communicate through a messaging app like WhatsApp, access online banking, entrust your data to an online health service or simply lock a device with a password, you are relying on encryption. For children as for adults, encryption is part of their lives, keeping their personal information safe online and offline.
What is encryption and why does it matter for children’s rights?
Encryption is a way to protect our information from unauthorised access. It involves a technology which conceals information so that it can only be read with a key. A particular encryption method, called end-to-end encryption (or E2EE), ensures that only the sender and the receiver can read that information – no one else, not even the platform on which the exchange of information takes place, has the key.
In terms of children’s fundamental rights, the most obvious ones that encryption impacts are privacy, freedom of expression and information, and children’s right to protection from violence. Encryption poses both benefits and risks to each of these rights, which are all important for children. These rights are also interdependent, with the fulfilment of each being necessary to ensure the realisation of the others.
| By limiting the number of people who can see what information children exchange online or access their data, encryption benefits children’s privacy. Knowing that they are not being continuously surveilled, whether online or offline, helps children to build trust with parents, teachers or others they have personal relationships with, and makes it more likely that they will ask for help when they need it.
Privacy and trust-building are particularly important for children who have a higher risk of being targeted for what they communicate about. LGBT+ children, Indigenous children, children from ethnic or religious minorities, children affected by domestic violence, children engaged in political activism in settings where that poses a risk, children with disabilities—all face specific threats online. |
Encrypted services might be used to disseminate content that violates children’s privacy, such as non-consensual information and child sexual abuse material. | |
| The privacy afforded by encryption bolsters children’s freedom of expression and information. It provides them with the opportunity to express their opinions and seek, receive and impart information on a variety of topics, including political, social, cultural and religious issues, without fear of repercussions. This is particularly true of children from disadvantaged or marginalised groups. | The spread of so-called 'bad-information' like disinformation and hate speech through encrypted services can lead children to self-censor. | |
| Encrypted services can protect children from being targeted by violence based on information they send or receive, especially where they are part of disadvantaged or marginalised groups.
Access to children’s personal data can make them vulnerable to grooming and exploitation, but encryption helps to keep the data secure. |
Encryption can facilitate violence against children, in particular sexual abuse, for example by allowing perpetrators to access and disseminate child sexual abuse material online undetected or by keeping the communications between the child and the perpetrator private in the case of grooming, making it more difficult to investigate and prosecute abuse. |
What are the terms of the current debate?
Given the complex interplay between encryption and children’s rights, it is no surprise that a debate is currently raging on encryption and public safety, in particular regarding the fight against online child sexual abuse. The discussion involves a range of actors, from policymakers and law enforcement officials, to civil society organisations, academia and the tech industry.
Important developments are currently taking place which will shape the standards on encryption and children’s rights for years to come. For example, at regional level, the European Union is discussing new legislation to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse. Individual states are also trying to respond to this problem, with the United Kingdom deliberating its Online Safety Bill, while the United States is looking at platforms’ liability regarding child sexual abuse material. The technology industry is weighing in on this debate as well. For example, in 2021, Apple announced plans for new child safety features, but facing severe criticism from civil society organisations, it decided to change some of its plans and pause others. In April 2022, Meta agreed to implement most recommendations of an independent human rights assessment on end-to-end encryption that it had commissioned.
The debate on encryption and children’s rights is often divided between approaches centred on child protection, which tend to emphasise the challenges that encryption poses in the fight against child abuse, and perspectives focused on civil liberties, which stress the role of encryption in upholding cyber security, protecting against mass surveillance and defending those from disadvantaged or marginalised groups.
The problem is that this polarised conversation does not always fully recognise that children’s rights are on both sides of the discourse. ‘Privacy vs. protection’ is a false dilemma. Children have privacy and free speech rights online - and these rights have a protection element to them. In upholding children’s expression as private and free, these rights protect children from being subjected to violence based on what they communicate.
What next?
The debate on encryption and the fight against online child sexual abuse is challenging, with valid concerns from many perspectives. No single organisation has all the expertise necessary to prevent sexual violence against children in the digital environment or to protect children’s civil and political rights online. Therefore, the terms of the debate will change only by bringing together the views of policymakers, civil society (including the children’s rights, child protection, digital privacy and free expression communities), industry and academia, and, of course, children themselves. Encouraging conversations that move away from antagonistic perspectives towards common ground is essential to ensuring that children’s rights are protected on all fronts.
This article is part of a series produced for a joint project between CRIN and defenddigitalme exploring a children’s rights approach to encryption. It might be further refined and updated as our own understanding of the topic develops.
Sign up to our newsletter to stay updated and follow the project on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram at #PrivacyAndProtection