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UK Home Secretary Calls for Unfettered Access to Encrypted Messaging

© AFP 2023 / LIONEL BONAVENTUREThe logo of mobile app "WhatsApp" is displayed on a tablet on January 2, 2014 in Paris
The logo of mobile app WhatsApp is displayed on a tablet on January 2, 2014 in Paris - Sputnik International
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The Interior minister of the UK said on Sunday that the country’s intelligence should be given access to encrypted content in online messaging applications for more effective work on preventing terrorist attacks.

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British media reported that Khalid Masood, the man behind the recent terror attack in London, sent an encrypted message via WhatsApp shortly before ploughing his car into pedestrians and stabbing a police officer to death.

According to Interior Minister Amber Rudd, providing terrorists with a place to hide and depriving authorities of access to information that could be life-saving is "completely unacceptable."

"We need to make sure that organizations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don't provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other," Rudd told the BBC.

According to Home Secretary, if the country's intelligence services and law enforcement can't be given access to encoded communications upon the government's request, tragedies like the Westminster Bridge attack are inevitable.

"We have to have a situation where we can have our security services get into the terrorists' communications. That's absolutely the case," she argued.

Armed police officers patrol outside Westminster underground station the morning after an attack in London, Britain, March 23, 2017. - Sputnik International
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The secretary urged Facebook, Google and Telegram owners to engage with the government in an emergency situation.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also expressed concern with encrypted messaging apps in an interview with the Sunday Times, and called on technology companies to create a software that would detect and remove extremist material.

It emerged on Sunday that Masood had been on the radar of the intelligence community for potential links to extremism since 2010, after he returned from teaching English in Saudi Arabia.    

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