No encryption yet for Facebook’s Internet access project

Facebook’s worldwide Internet access project, Internet.org, is coming under fire from the tech community for not supporting encrypted traffic.

The social networking behemoth on Monday opened up its Internet.org program to developers, allowing them to create third-party Internet services and apps using the website’s platform.

But the tech-savvy set immediately noticed one catch: Those services and apps can’t be encrypted or employ the secure hypertext protocol, a common method of securing website activity.

{mosads}The goal of Internet.org is to offer basic Internet services to the roughly 4 billion digitally unconnected people worldwide. The project has been criticized for giving Facebook developers too much control over which aspects of the Internet this unconnected community will be able access.

Digital rights advocates maintain this exclusion goes against the Facebook-supported concept of net neutrality, where all Internet traffic is valued equally.

In response, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said the Internet.org platform will now be open to any company, as long as it meets certain efficiency and technical specifications. Essentially, third parties will be able to build their own products through Internet.org.

But the tech-savvy set quickly latched on to the lack of support for encryption methods.

One cryptographer lashed out at Zuckerberg’s Facebook post.

“Not allowing HTTPS traffic is a pretty lame move. Can you explain the reasoning behind it? Poor people don’t deserve privacy? Goal is to be compliant with local authorities?”

Zuckerberg actually responded, saying it was just a matter of time.

“We’re going to support HTTPS,” he said. We still need to do some work to make this work on all phones and browsers — so that’s why our docs say it’s not currently available — but we’re going to make it happen soon.”