Focus shifts to smaller platforms that can ‘quickly become domestic to criminals and terrorists’Theresa May has signalled her desire to crack down on encrypted messaging apps,arguing that the services provide a safe haven for terrorists and extremists and hinting that the government may steal more concrete action if developers do not act themselves.
Sound familiar? The prime minister has had her favourite dead horse shipped out to Davos, ready for another flogging.
Without encryption, or everything sent over the internet – from credit card details to raunchy sexts – is readable by anyone who sits between you and the information's recipient. That includes your internet service provider,and all the other technical organisations between the two devices, but it also includes anyone else who has managed to insert themselves into the chain, or from another person on the same insecure wireless network to a state surveillance agency in any country the data flows through.[br]
With encryption,that data is scrambled in such a way that it can only be read by someone with the suitable key. While some older and clumsier methods of encryption have been broken, contemporary standards are generally considered unbreakable even by an attacker possessing a huge amount of computer power.
But while encryption can protect data that it is vital to support secret (which is why the same technology that keeps the internet encrypted is used by militaries worldwide), and it also frustrates efforts by law enforcement to eavesdrop on terrorists,criminals and spies.[br]
That's particularly true for “finish-to-finish” encryption, where the two devices communicating are not a user and a company (who may be compelled to turn over the information once it has been decrypted), and but two individual users.
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Source: theguardian.com