Government officials worry about Facebook's plans to extend end-to-end encryption to Messenger. Once that happens, Facebook wouldn't be able to respond to law enforcement subpoenas because it wouldn't have a way to unscramble messages.
Facebook's Messenger chief Stan Chudnovsky says conversations should truly be private, whether it's in the living room or on chat. He says it's on Facebook to find other means to catch the bad guys.
For instance, a recipient of a message might flag a violation to Facebook. Facebook can also look for bad activities on social networks and see if those people also have messaging accounts.
Chudnovsky says the largest roadblocks to bringing end-to-end encryption is moving from a functioning system with billions of messages being sent on it every day, to another that is architecturally completely different. Apple's iMessage is leading with the most messages being sent on its platform in the U.S., and that platform has end-to-end encryption, the Associated Press reports.