Home secretary Amber Rudd renews government attacks on internet encryption

"There should be no place for terrorists to hide," claimed Rudd

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has criticised the use of encryption in communications apps, such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

It follows the Westminster terrorist attack in London last week and claims that the attacker sent a WhatsApp message just prior to the incident.

Rudd appeared on television over the weekend to demand that the government - and, presumably, governments everywhere - should have a 'golden' decryption key so that online communications could be instantly and easily read by police and security services.

"It is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide," she told the BBC Andrew Marr Show.

"We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don't provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other."

Rudd went on to suggest that the government would lean on technology firms in a bid to force them to comply.

"We have to have a situation where we can have our security services get into the terrorists' communications," she added. "That's absolutely the case."

However, Rudd's claims were met with widespread cynicism.

"It is right that technology companies should help the police and intelligence agencies with investigations into specific crimes or terrorist activity, where possible. This help should be requested through warrants and the process should be properly regulated and monitored," said Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock.

"However, compelling companies to put backdoors into encrypted services would make millions of ordinary people less secure online. We all rely on encryption to protect our ability to communicate, shop and bank safely."

Meanwhile, others suggested that Rudd is ignorant of technology and that she doesn't understand that such proposals would cause more problems than they solve.

"When building a back-door into any system, you inherently introduce vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious entities, such as hackers.

"These hackers could be state-sponsored individuals, or a group of terrorists themselves. It is entirely possible that malicious actors could use these vulnerabilities to gather users' information and leak, sell or even exploit it," said Noah Stride, a systems administrator for the Pirate Party UK.

"In short, whilst Rudd makes the argument that weakening encryption might increase national security, it would empirically end up achieving the complete opposite."