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Instagram is removing end-to-end encryption from direct messages starting today, a significant reversal for a platform that rolled out the protection just a couple of years ago. For the hundreds of millions of people who use Instagram to share private conversations, that content is now potentially visible to Meta and, by extension, to legal requests.
Meanwhile in Britain, the Home Office is shopping for contractors to overhaul its Strategic Central and Bureau Platform, the country's core biometrics system, in a procurement worth up to three hundred million pounds. The government says the system has already moved to more modern technology stacks, and now wants industry partners to help support and develop it further. When a single platform holds the fingerprints and facial data of an entire nation, who builds and maintains it matters enormously.
And on the artificial intelligence front, developers are asking whether Anthropic's Opus four point seven represents a step backward from its predecessor. It's a question that cuts to something genuinely interesting about how we measure progress in large language models, where improvements in one area often come with quiet regressions in another.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
