British Prime Minister wants to ban end to end encryption
Mark Scott:
Popular messaging services like Snapchat and WhatsApp are in the cross hairs in Britain.
That was the message delivered on Monday by Prime Minister David Cameron, who said he would pursue banning encrypted messaging services if Britain’s intelligence services were not given access to the communications.
The statement comes as many European politicians are demanding that Internet companies like Google and Facebook provide greater information about people’s online activities after several recent terrorist threats, including the attacks in Paris.
Dreadful idea, to be sure.
Governments shouldn’t have access to everything just because they cite such broad issues as “because terrorism.”
It’s already been made clear that law enforcement agencies can (and should) fend off terrorism through more traditional methods. Particularly, ones that don’t compromise the privacy of billions of people.
It will be very interesting to see what our 2016 presidential candidates have to say about this issue in the coming months.