The British government said Sunday that its security services must have access to encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp, revealing it was used by the killer behind the parliament attack.<\/p>\n
Khalid Masood, the 52-year-old Briton who killed four people before being shot dead in a rampage in Westminster on Wednesday, reportedly used the Facebook-owned service moments before the assault.<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told Sky News it was \u201ccompletely unacceptable\u201d that police and security services had not been able to crack the heavily encrypted service.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t have a situation where you have terrorists talking to each other \u2014 where this terrorist sent a WhatsApp message \u2014 and it can\u2019t be accessed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Police said Saturday that they still do not know why Masood, a Muslim convert with a violent criminal past, carried out the attack and said it was likely that he acted alone, despite a claim by the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere should be no place for terrorists to hide,\u201d Rudd said in a separate interview with the BBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp \u2014 and there are plenty of others like that \u2014 don\u2019t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said end-to-end encryption was vital to cyber security, to ensure that business, banking and other transactions were safe \u2014 but said it must also be accessible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not incompatible. You can have a system whereby they can build it so that we can have access to it when it is absolutely necessary,\u201d she told Sky News.<\/p>\n
Rudd said she did not yet intend to force the industry\u2019s hand with new legislation, but would meet key players on Thursday to discuss this issue, as well as the \u201cconstant battle\u201d against extremist videos posted online.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best people \u2014 who understand the technology, who understand the necessary hashtags \u2014 to stop this stuff even being put up, not just taking it down, are going to be them,\u201d she told the BBC.<\/p>\n
US authorities last year fought a legal battle with tech giant Apple to get it to unlock a smartphone used by the perpetrator of a terror attack in California.<\/p>\n
The FBI\u2019s own experts ended up breaking into the device.<\/p>\n
Social media giants are also coming under pressure over extremist content posted on their sites.<\/p>\n
Germany this month proposed fining social networks such as Facebook if they fail to wipe illegal hate speech from their sites.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Google has faced a boycott by companies whose adverts appeared alongside extremist content on its internet platforms, particularly its video-sharing site YouTube.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The British government said Sunday that its security services must have access to encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp, revealing it was used by the killer behind the parliament attack. Khalid Masood, the 52-year-old Briton who killed four people before being shot dead in a rampage in Westminster on Wednesday, reportedly used the Facebook-owned service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[798,1173,5534],"yoast_head":"\n