Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for the United Kingdom, has called for an end to the encryption features that messaging services such as Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) WhatsApp employ arguing that technology firms had a role to play in assisting governments to get access to data that would assist them in fighting terrorism. The U.K. Secretary of State said this after it came to light that the man who was identified as the attacker in Wednesday’s Westminster terror attack had been on WhatsApp moments prior to driving a truck into pedestrians.
“There should be no place for terrorists to hide. We need to make sure that organizations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other,” Rudd said in an interview on BBC.
WhatsApp fully cooperating
A spokesperson for WhatsApp pointed out that the firm was horrified by the Westminster attack before adding that it was fully cooperating with the authorities as the investigations into the attack continued.
Besides the BBC interview, Rudd also wrote an article in a Sunday newspaper which blamed the internet for spreading hate and extremist ideology, though it spreads everything else as well. But Rudd has not been the only U.K. government minister demanding the assistance of tech companies in combating terrorism. Boris Johnson, the U.K. Foreign Secretary commented in an interview that internet firms need to stop generating revenues from spreading content that is prurient and violent, though did not give any definition of such things.
User privacy
Rudd’s comments will only add more fuel to the struggle between world governments and tech firms on issues of user privacy. Such a move of deploying access to user data that is selective could see the secure messaging’s basic architecture compromised and consequently leaving users exposed and vulnerable to hackers. As an example, WhatsApp does not keep user communication records. Users of the messaging tool also have the option of choosing not to have their messages saved locally which means that trying to bow to the demands of law enforcement authorities would lead to the product being crippled.
On Friday shares of Facebook Inc edged up by 0.58% to close the day at $140.34.
