UK interior minister accuses WhatsApp of giving terrorists ‘secret place to hide’

Technology companies must cooperate more with law enforcement agencies and should stop offering a “secret place for terrorists to communicate” using encrypted messages, British interior minister Amber Rudd said on Sunday.

Speaking after it emerged that the police were investigating that London attacker Khalid Masood had used the encrypted WhatsApp service just before he launched the attack in Westminster, in which he killed four people, Rudd said it was “completely unacceptable” that the police and security services were shut out from messages of this kind.

Scotland Yard and the security services cannot access encrypted messages sent on Whatsapp, meaning they have no idea what Masood said - or to whom - in his final communication three minutes before he began Wednesday's slaughter.

“It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide … 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.”

“It used to be that people would steam open envelopes, or just listen in on phones, when they wanted to find out what people were doing, legally, through warrantry, but in this situation we need to make sure that our intelligences services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp,” Rudd said.

Speaking on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Rudd refused to rule out passing new legislation to tackle encrypted messaging and the posting of extremist material online, although she stressed her desire to persuade internet and social media companies to cooperate voluntarily with the government on these issues.

She also signalled a renewed determination to stop internet companies publishing extremist material online by declaring that they now had to accept they were “publishing companies”, with the responsibilities that went with that, not just technology firms providing a platform.

The home secretary also said she would be holding talks with firms this week “to ask them to work with us” on these matters.

She stressed that she did not want the security services to be able to access all encrypted messages. She was just talking about “carefully thought-through, legally covered arrangements”, she said.

Asked if she would be willing to legislate to force companies to allow a “back door” to enable encrypted messages to be read in cases involving terrorism, she replied: “We have to have a situation where we can have our security services get into the terrorists’ communications. That’s absolutely the case. Of course, I will have those conversations [with the industry], and we will see where they go.”

She indicated that she hoped to be able to win them over without resorting to legislation. “These people have families, have children as well,” she said. “They should be on our side, and I’m going to try to win that argument.”

The attack on Wednesday looks set to reignite the privacy-versus-secrecy debate in Europe, especially after warnings from security officials that Western countries will be increasingly targeted as Islamic State loses ground in the Middle East.

The police and security services have for some years expressed concerns about the ability of firms to provide messaging services using end-to-end encryption that means texts and emails cannot be accessed in extremis by the service provider, or by the authorities demanding that information with a warrant.