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British prime minister says he’ll ban encrypted chat apps if he can’t see your messages

For several months we’ve followed the U.S. government’s attempts to work around encryption in chat apps, even taking the hyperbole to an illogical extreme at one point, but we haven’t yet seen similar threats from other nations… or at least, we hadn’t until today.

British prime minister David Cameron said today that unless the government is given backdoor access to encrypted messaging services, he’s just going to outlaw them:

“Are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read?” Cameron said Monday while campaigning, in reference to apps such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, and other encrypted services. “My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not.'”

Citing the recent terrorist attack in Paris, Cameron made the elimination of private communications part of his re-election platform.

Whether he would actually be able to follow through on such a promise is not yet known. Affected services would include offerings such as iMessage, WhatsApp, and other popular apps.

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Comments

  1. Whoda (@Whodakat) - 9 years ago

    So essentially, we can no longer converse in private? I’m pretty sure the terrorists have won.

    • RP - 9 years ago

      Yep, sad isn’t it?

      • Gregory Wright - 9 years ago

        No, they have not.

      • shareef777 - 9 years ago

        The irony of the whole situation is that it’s not like terrorists can’t come up with other means to communicate that’s hidden from governments.

    • Mike Retondo (@mretondo) - 9 years ago

      You never did have the right to a private conversation. The courts have always allowed your phones to be tapped. They could put cameras in your house, work, car…

      • mikhailt - 9 years ago

        Yes, it’s called a search warrant, which often requires a valid probable cause. You also said the word “courts”.

        There’s a difference between having rights and requiring the government to show cause to violate the rights without any consequences and having no rights and allowing government unrestricted access to all of your communications.

        Unfortunately, encryption requires totality, you cannot have a backdoor in encryption and have it only accessed by the government. A backdoor is essentially a security hole, if it can be accesses legitimately, it can also be accessed illegitimately.

        I understand the problem facing the law enforcement and the governments but at the same time, I cannot stand for backdoors that allows not only governments but any criminals to have mass access to everyone’s communications. Look at NSA for evidence for why this must not be allowed.

      • mikhailt - 9 years ago

        Just to be clear, this is what the US constitution says about this:

        > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

        We do have the right but the wording “against unreasonable searches” suggests as long as it is reasonable and specific with probable cause, it is allowed.

      • Robert Dupuy - 9 years ago

        In the United States, the supreme court has been clear that you do have a right to private communications – and in fact, that a democracy can’t function without it.

        But, the article is about the UK…so granted you may be referring to a different legal tradition.

      • danhenrie - 9 years ago

        Just so eveyone is clear. America isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic this may seem a minor point but is pivotal to this conversation. The will of congress cannot take away certain rights in a republic, the same is not true in a democracy

    • rymc02 - 9 years ago

      My thoughts exactly

  2. dragonitedd - 9 years ago

    lol…wow… the great Britain…

  3. mikhailt - 9 years ago

    Another politician who has no idea how technology works and doesn’t realize he is effectively caving into terrorism.

    I hate these governments and these assholes. NOBODY is entitled to any private communication, thoughts, and so on from anybody else, period. Nothing justifies taking that away form us, not even terrorism.

    This idiot is effectively letting terrorism win if he thinks destroying the very nature of democratic society, which must include freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and freedom of privacy is the way to fight terrorism.

    No No No. These terrorists hate the freedoms, that’s the very reason they’re fighting us, they want to take these thing away from us to restore us back to the state where the government can do whatever they want, including control over of what we say, what we eat, how we pray and how often.

    • robertsm76 - 9 years ago

      Mikhailt, you let terrorism when by not stopping it and defeating it.

      Both sides of the argument have valid points.

      • robertsm76 - 9 years ago

        *win

      • mikhailt - 9 years ago

        How is giving up all of our rights stop terrorism? The short answer, it doesn’t. You have less rights in Russia and it still happens, same for China.

        By taking rights away from citizens, you’re not defeating terrorism, in fact you’re increasing the odds of a different kind of problem, uprising and insurgency from your own citizens who will want their freedom back. Look at any history books and you’ll find all sorts of evidence that this will happen.

        Terrorism has been with us since the beginning of mankind and will remain with us until the death of mankind, you cannot defeat it.

        The best way to reduce terrorism is to educate, fight for rights for everybody, and not be the bad guys ourselves. None of which requires giving up our privacy and other rights.

      • Terrorism is what the bigger army calls the smaller army.
        The only ones that will have private communications wil be your king and queen lol

    • Roman Hawke - 9 years ago

      I’m so tired of idiots like yourself crying about a government looking to secure their states. You will be the first person crying foul when a terror plot was discovered encrypted on someone’s server that could have been thwarted had the messages not been encrypted.

      The constitution could never have been conceived with what technology would bring. No way our forefathers could have anticipated the wars that would plague us, or how technology would be party to that.

      The faithless want religion to adapt to today’s world, but fall silent in regards to the constitution, plain and simple,mit needs to be updated to reflect the times.

      • Attila Tamás Zimler - 9 years ago

        The problem with backdoors is that they give unrestricted access, so they don’t have to tailor monitoring to a particular goal. Had they have to put in high efforts for example because you need a lot of computing power to decrypt the message would result in tailored monitoring not unconditionally monitor everybody. The different viewpoints are not about monitoring the terrorists. It’s about monitoring everybody. A person should be only monitored if there is a reason to do and yes, the reason of being a bored secret service operator is not enough.

      • standardpull - 9 years ago

        To me, you’re saying “Times have changed, and some of the principles of the constitution are obsolete” – and many fear-mongers in Congress, on the news, and on the Roberts court would agree.

        People seem to forget that terrorists are really controlled by people with an unthinkable amount of political power. These power-brokers pass laws that say its actually good to blow up certain classes of people that they don’t like. And the citizens have no say – as talking against such garbage is in itself a death sentence for you and your family.

        So I don’t think we should be so quick to give up our rights, our power. Because it is inevitable that those in power will use their new “legal capabilities” to manipulate elections, shape law and the courts, amass power, and diminish the potential of particular groups of people.

        The CIA listened in on members of congress. The courts don’t consider probing text messages records an act that requires a warrant. The lawmakers want to prohibit any two people from communicating securely using encryption. Is this the world you want to live in?

        Think it can’t happen? Look at the rise of power in the USSR, South Africa, Nazi Germany, and many other countries and it is clear that a small imbalance of power can be amplified to the point where it spirals out of control for decades until catastrophic failure.

      • PMZanetti - 9 years ago

        YEA keep believing that terrorism it’s actually real, and any thing other than organized government sponsored agenda steering.

      • darevsek - 9 years ago

        Wait, so if I write in code on paper with a pen, and then send the same thing over an encrypted chat app… it’s majorly different, and the forefathers were so stupid they could not have seen technology coming???

        Paper or app… NO DIFFERENCE. I write a letter in code and send in mail, or send encrypted over app. It’s still private.

        Please pick up a history book or two with some of the forefathers letters and writings. They were the first ones to tell you not to give up your freedoms for “security”. How many of these attacks (even Paris recently) and the “we were watching them” or the “they were on the list” type of snipit’s were said about the attackers. Hell even Boston they said they were watching the kids. So if you have them on list, and watching them, why are you not stopping them? They keep saying they “stopped” things but give not details ever, so until details given I don’t believe them.

        While your in the history section, learn about how Hitler and his Germans burned their own government building to get the general public angry so that they could take over then start a world war shortly after. Or how the first Bush used a diplomat’s daughter as someone who lied about baby’s being taken out of incubators and thrown on the floor to get the general public behind him going in for the Gulf War. So, trusting your government fully is not a good thing. More “secure” they want to make it the more freedoms they will take away.

        If nothing else, please read George Orwell’s 1984. Because that is what seems to be these “leaders” are using as a manual. And it is to be a warning NOT a manual.

  4. bdkennedy11 - 9 years ago

    Just like Bush used 9/11 as an excuse for the Patriot Act.

  5. Then he can go F***K himself.

  6. Zac Hall - 9 years ago

    British Prime Minister Scott Forstall, makes sense

    • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

      Zac I don’t think you read the article.

      • GeniusUnleashed - 9 years ago

        Article? Mike, it’s four lines. You’re doing good work so far, but come on man.

      • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

        Yeah man, it’s an article. That’s what these collections of words on a page are called.

    • rettun1 - 9 years ago

      So that’s where he’s been…

      • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

        Just the other day he just announced that the UK flag will be redesigned in beautiful, rich Corinthian leather.

  7. nsxrebel - 9 years ago

    Government doesn’t want us to have secret/private communication, yet they have some of, if not the most encrypted means of communication.

  8. WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

    Cameron can go feck himself. There’s a reason I didn’t vote for the smarmy git. He sure as hell isn’t getting it next election either.

    He’s been against this kind of thing since day one using the “think about the children!” line over and over. Pathetic. No doubt the Daily Fail will support his righteous cause! They can feck off too.

  9. tincan2012 - 9 years ago

    What he meant to say was iPhones will no longer be sold to terrorists.

    • Terrorists, by and large, don’t use iPhones. One of the reasons for this is that iPhones can be tracked continuously. They are also cost-prohibitive. I bet terrorists gravitate towards simple, disposable phones that are harder to track. They don’t use iMessage. But talk of banning encryption isn’t new. Back in the 90’s 128 bit encryption was considered a weapon subject to export and import controls by the US. Then online shopping and banking boomed and encryption was legalized. The internet can’t work without encryption. There is no appreciable difference between a user accessing his bank account through SSL and someone sending an encrypted text message. You can’t have the one without the other. If a ban on encrypted messaging passes, I would sue to have commercial encryption removed as well. This is just rhetoric. They want to build pressure on manufacturers to build in a back door. We have to see who will blink first. I’m highly skeptical that the NSA and GCHQ have not penetrated iMessage in some way. It has been shown that a determined attacker with access to Apple infrastructure (that holds the certificates and keys required for iMessage encryption and decryption) can do a list of things to intercept the messages on the network. So, the issue is not that it can’t be done. The issue is that it’s not easy and takes a lot of resources. So the argument is one of economics. They want no encrypted messaging, since that allows them to monitor everybody. But encrypted messaging and tailored targeting, as one of the other commenters pointed out, would be the better solution for the citizenry and for the government as well.

  10. just1n12 - 9 years ago

    Tim Cook even said in a interview with Charlie Rose that even if the government wanted your personal messages Apple couldn’t get them for the government to look at, that’s how secure Apples iMessages software is.

    • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

      Yeah, that’s why the government is so tweaked. They want access to that, so Cameron is basically saying Apple has to change the way iMessage works or it will be banned.

  11. Adam Blake (@iAdamB) - 9 years ago

    Won’t that be interesting, the UK going back to a communications dark ages. If they ban some systems they will be at a distinct commercial disadvantage to the rest of the world. Not only that but they will put a real clamp on technological investment and therefore IT jobs in the UK. It’s a no-win situation for anyone.

  12. I love UK but Mr. Cameron, come on, have a thought about something before you say it because this wasn’t wise :)

  13. varera (@real_varera) - 9 years ago

    Politics are stupid. They do not realise banning one encrypted platform does not prevent another to appear.

  14. You never did have the right to a private conversation. The courts have always allowed your phones to be tapped.

  15. Oflife - 9 years ago

    Ah, Mr. Cameron, always the visionless opportunist. First of all, these people communicate and plan in cafes, such as those up and down The Edgware Road (London), secondly, and as others have pointed out since the Snowden revelations, target the people you are suspicious of, just as in the old days when two blokes in dark glasses would sit in a darkened window van around the corner from a crooks house keeping an eye out.

    Electronic surveillance is lazy and infringes on your right to privacy and the right to protest.

  16. alanaudio - 9 years ago

    Cameron is totally clueless, he will say one thing one day and the opposite another. Furthermore he doesn’t worry about little details such as evidence if he wishes to promote a particular ideology.

    On the one hand we have Cameron threatening to ban messages that can’t be listened in to by his secret services and on the other hand he has already banned his ministers from using iPads from the Cabinet Office because he believes that “countries including China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan could have developed viruses that would allow iPads and mobile phones to be used as bugs, even when they are switched off.”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487026/iPads-banned-Cabinet-meetings-Chinese-spying-fears.html

    If he truly believes that a country like Pakistan has developed such an iPad virus while the US and UK has not managed to do so, then he really needs to be taking a serious look at the competence of his security people.

    A more realistic analysis might be that he simply doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about and simply says what he imagines might suit a particular audience.

    • Fact is, how do YOU know that the US or UK haven’t developed an iPad virus? In fact, if they HAVE developed a virus like that then they will be well aware that it is possible. Hence the banning…

  17. nekomichikun - 9 years ago

    His exact quote was: “In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which […] we cannot read?” He was also using the recent Paris attacks as an excuse.

    In which case he should also ban houses made from bricks because bricks are not transparent and therefore prevents government spying on whatever activities take place inside.

    Millions of people legitimately use these services because they’re private and secure, even if they were used for crime, it would be a tiny minority of users. To ban the services just because he can’t see everything everyone is sending is like burning an entire building to fix a rat infestation.

    I’m sure there are other ways intelligence agencies can monitor persons of interest.

  18. silas681- - 9 years ago

    As a Brit I can only despair that such an idiotic thing can be said by our ‘leader’. This is pandering to ill informed right wing voters, plain and simple! No way this would ever be achievable!

  19. 89p13 - 9 years ago

    More Fear-Mongering from politicians who are living by sound-bites. What’s he going to do – block iPhones (and other secure devices) from being sold in great britian (lower case intentional)? Yeah – that’ll be a real “winner” of a political platform.

    These clowns are just trying to take advantage of the tragedy that occurred last week – and may yet happen again – and they’ll be there to try and push their political agenda . . . Just like Holder and the FBI tried to use the scenario of a child abduction and blaming secure phones. FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) pushed to the absurd.

    Don’t give in people – stand up for your rights and send these morons back to where they live – in the technological stone ages of the 1950’s.

    • silas681- - 9 years ago

      LOL. The term GREAT Britain is not used “cos we think we is great”, although obvioulsy we do as we started the industrial revolution, created America (tongue in cheek) and invented most of the useful things on the planet (the jet engine, radar, the spinning jenny and the ARM processor to name an ecelectic few). The word great is simply used to describe the largest of the British Isles, and so doesn’t include Ireland.

      Derivation of “Great”

      The classical writer, Ptolemy, referred to the larger island as great Britain (megale Britannia) and to Ireland as little Britain (mikra Brettania) in his work, Almagest (147–148 AD).[22] In his later work, Geography (c. 150 AD), he gave these islands the names[23] Alwion[sic], Iwernia, and Mona (the Isle of Man), suggesting these may have been native names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest.[24] The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Great Britain, after which Britain became the more common-place name for the island called Great Britain.[17]

  20. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    Go ahead you sociopathic maniac. You’ll be banned, long before private communication.

  21. I don’t get where this STOPS terrorists…? They can send Paper in an envelope, they can send an attachment in an email, and they can send instant messages… ALL can be encrypted, and all can get past so called security in place to stop them…!

    This has nothing to do with terrorism but more to do with taking the rights away from everyday citizens…!

    If they really want to stop terrorists, then they can, after all they keep saying they have been doing it all this time anyway…!!!

    • 89p13 - 9 years ago

      “This has nothing to do with terrorism but more to do with taking the rights away from everyday citizens…!”

      Exactly – Nicely said!

  22. Silence Dogood - 9 years ago

    By similar reasoning, if we are attacked by terrorists, while our politicians are touting how safe they made it for us, we should, with regards to current government, outlaw it!

  23. monty72 - 9 years ago

    What a facking retard!

  24. eldernorm - 9 years ago

    David Cameron is just another political clown who has no real idea of what is going on. He is shouting things that may get him re-elected. Lets add to his proposal, that we allow bugs to be put in every home so the government (you know, those idiots that cannot keep their own secrets) to hear everything we say.

  25. Apparently the best way to defend free-speech and liberty is by dismantling freedoms and trampling liberty.
    Who knew?

    Fellow Brits, please let’s not give this clown another term.

  26. Is the UK going to decriminalize murder, bombings and other crimes at the same time? Because if not, then just what criminal is going to give a rat’s ass that they’re breaking another law by using end-to-end encryption?

    And should these geniuses get backdoors in every large-scale chat product… What happens when criminals and anyone else who obtains the keys start hacking and spying on them?

    I hope they have self-flushing toilets at Cameron’s house – or at least that he has a butler to wipe his ass, because I’m surprised this neanderthal can speak.

  27. John Smith - 9 years ago

    Chances of Cameron managing to ban WhatsApp is pretty small – bit like when he claimed he would end EU immigration to UK and then had to eat his words. Have to laugh at him on that one.

    All the same I’m in favour of limited security services/law enforcement access, but NOT a free for all.

    Cops should be able access phones/computers/telecoms records, but only with a court order. Security services should be able to access web traffic, but only in clear life threatening situations – terrorists, spies, child molesters etc. No one should be snooping on ordinary folk who are not harming anyone else.

    If that needs legislation to control google etc, then so be it – these multi-billion dollar global corporations can’t be above governments, courts or people’s safety.

  28. blakthundar - 9 years ago

    Can’t believe I’m the first to say this but.. I bet Prime Minister Cameron would like backdoor access *ba-dum-tiss*. Can’t let a good tragedy go to waste I suppose.

  29. Chris Cheshire - 9 years ago

    This d&^%head has no idea what he is talking about.

    Terrorists don’t use iPhones for a start, they use burner phones and normally use them once and discard them.

    They also generally plan these plots in person with very little if any information recorded at all.

    When was the last time any plot was found written down or on an iPhone?

    Why is it that Leaders of Nations are now falling into their own category of dumbasses?

  30. vkd108 - 9 years ago

    Problem – Reaction – Solution

    A clear opportunity for the so-called governments to legalise their stealth activity. The Paris shooting incident has already been exposed as a fraud, the cop on the pavement was NOT killed, his head would have exploded if hit by that firearm at that distance. His head did not explode. There was not one single drop of any kind of liquid, what to speak of blood, even synthetic. There was a small plume of dust from the pavement near his face though, probably from the air from the rifle barrel shot ‘dry’.

  31. charismatron - 9 years ago

    Because of terrorists there are films you can’t see, cartons you can’t read, and now conversations you can’t have. They have indeed won, or our politicians are actually the ones which “hate our freedoms”. You decide.

  32. Mee Kinki - 9 years ago

    Better find yourself a new job then, as you won’t be reelected.

  33. I’ll trade my iMessages for the British government’s admin user id’s and passwords for their email servers. Fair is fair.

  34. cryptowaveuk - 9 years ago

    And where the personal privacy goes? Ban chat apps, wow. How this will gonna work?