- Florida has rejected a bill to require compulsory encryption deadlines for social media
- The use of social media by the Bill minors was “indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration” May 3, 2025
- Confidentiality experts strongly criticized the proposal, warning that it would have made young people less safe instead
Florida has finally rejected a bill which would have required, among other things, compulsory encryption deadlines for all social media platforms which allow minors to open an account.
The “Social Media” bill was a way to improve online children’s safety and also included the obligations to prevent minors from using ephemeral messaging features, while providing full access to their activities to parents and legal guardians. However, confidentiality experts have strongly criticized the proposal, warning that it would have made young people less safe instead.
On May 3, 2025, the bill was “indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration”, “ As indicated on the official website of the Florida Senate.
“A victory for privacy”
Encryption is the technology used by secure messaging applications and the best VPN services to maintain online activities for private users.
The signal, WhatsApp, Imessage and Instagram use end -to -end encryption to blur all the messages leaving a device in an illegible form to prevent unauthorized access.
Florida legislators, however, wanted to force the social media platforms “to provide a mechanism to decipher end -to -end encryption when the police obtain a mandate or a summons”.
However, experts have long warned that it is impossible to create a stolen encryption door that only the police can exploit, de facto undergoing crucial security functionality for everyone.
Despite the Senate’s vote for the “Social Media” bill (SB 868 / HB 743), the Florida House of Representatives blocked it on May 3.
Not attracting the support of the two legislative chambers means that the proposal has not been adopted and has not been prevented from becoming law.
Update of May 5, 2025: In a victory for confidentiality and encryption, the Florida Legislative Assembly put an end to its regular session in 2025 May 2 without spending SB 868/HB 743. Https://t.co/jxawoexDUGMay 5, 2025
“In a victory for confidentiality and encryption, the Florida Legislative Assembly put an end to its regular session in 2025 on May 2 without adopting SB 868 / HB 743”, the Digital Rights Defense Group, the Electronic Foundation Frontier (EFF), commented in a tweet on May 5.
EFF experts previously considered the proposal “dangerous and stupid”, arguing how legislators “asked for the impossible” – a stolen encryption door only for minors that only the vouchers could have used.
This is not the first time that a similar bill did not receive the majority necessary to become the law around the world.
In Europe, for example, France has rejected the controversial provision of the stolen encryption door included in the drug trafficking law in March for similar reasons.
The European Commission also failed to agree on what has been nicknamed chat control, a bill that would use compulsory analyzes of all the cats of all citizens in order to stop the spread of sexual abuse material.
Nevertheless, encryption remains at the crossroads on a global scale – on the one hand, the police consider it an obstacle to a criminal investigation, on the other, the experts in cybersecurity reiterate its importance to the privacy and security of each online.
