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The British government is attempting to use the recent attack in London to crackdown on online privacy as British Interior Minister Amber Rudd said Sunday that technology companies must stop offering a "secret place for terrorists to communicate" using encrypted messages.
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Asked for her view on companies which offer end-to-end encrypted messages, Rudd said, "It is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide. We need to make sure organizations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don't provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other."
Her comments came after local media reported that British-born Khalid Masood sent an encrypted message moments before killing four people last week by plowing his car into pedestrians and fatally stabbing a policeman as he tried to get into parliament in an 82-second attack.
According to technology magazine Wired, end-to-end encryption means messages can only be decoded by the recipient and not by anyone in between, including the company providing the service.
Brian Paddick, a home affairs spokesperson for the opposition Liberal Democrats and former deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, rejected the suggestion that end-to-end encryption is aiding terrorists.
"The real question is, could lives have been saved in London last week if end-to-end encryption had been banned? All the evidence suggests that the answer is no."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told ITV later on Sunday that intelligence agencies already had “huge powers” of investigation and that there should be a balance between the “right to know” and “the right to privacy.”
The attack Wednesday looks set to reignite the privacy-versus-secrecy debate in Europe as several other attackers in the U.S. and Europe have also used secure messaging apps shortly before or during their attacks in France, Germany and Belgium.
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