San Francisco: The US, Britain and Australia have called on Facebook to give authorities the ability to circumvent encryption used in its messaging services — a measure opposed by the social media giant. Facebook has been dogged by several privacy scandals in recent years and has pledged to boost user protections by rolling out end-to-end encryption. But this risks weakening the ability of law enforcement to detect criminal acts including terrorism and child porn, according to a joint letter signed by US Attorney General William Barr, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel and Australian Home Minister Peter Dutton.

"We strongly oppose attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere," a Facebook spokesperson said.