E2EE Workshops

Balancing Trust and Safety on End-to-End Encrypted Platforms
While the idea of end-to-end encrypted communications has been around for decades, the deployment of default E2E encryption on billion-user scale platforms has major new impacts for user privacy and safety. Privacy against the prying eyes of governments and corporations used to be only available to those with the technical skills necessary to use esoteric software. Now, billions of people share the most private personal details in conversations that are protected from all but the most intrusive attempts by skilled adversaries, with no special skills or even intention to communicate privately necessary.
The deployment of default end-to-end encryption, most notably to Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s WhatsApp, has come with major benefits to both individuals and society. It has also created new risks, as long-existing models of messenger abuse can now flourish in an environment where automated or human review cannot reach it. Recent announcements of new E2E encrypted products have raised the prospect of new, less understood risks coming to the forefront. For example, none of the large E2E encrypted networks currently allow user discovery via a person’s commonly used name, and allowing encrypted initial contact from strangers could increase the volume of certain types of abuse.
Through a series of workshops and policy papers, the Stanford Internet Observatory is facilitating open and productive dialogue on this divisive and controversial topic to find common ground and areas of compromise. An important defining principle behind this workshop series is the explicit absence of discussion of exceptional access (aka backdoor) designs. This debate has raged between industry, academic cryptographers and law enforcement for decades and little progress has been made. We focus instead on interventions that can be used to reduce the harm of E2E encrypted communication products that have been less widely explored or implemented.

Call for Papers and Non-Presenting Participants
Soliciting presenters for three upcoming workshops
Workshops
Safety, Privacy and Internet Policy in Europe
Brussels, Belgium
Articles from Workshop Contributors

Low Hanging Fruit: Evidence Based Solutions to the Digital Evidence Challenge

Facebook's plan for E2EE Sacrifices Security for Privacy

Principles for a More Informed Exceptional Access Debate

Encryption in the U.S.: Crypto Colloquium Outcomes Report

Moving the Encryption Policy Conversation Forward

ICCS Keynote Address

Content Moderation for End-to-End Encrypted Messaging

End-to-end Encryption Statement

Everyone fights over encryption

Why Adding Client-Side Scanning Breaks End-To-End Encryption

On-Device Context: A defense against misinformation in the encrypted WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a Threat to Society. Here’s How to Fix It.
