London Terrorist Used WhatsApp, UK Calls For Backdoors (yahoo.com)

Wednesday 52-year-old Khalid Masood "drove a rented SUV into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before smashing it into Parliament's gates and rushing onto the grounds, where he fatally stabbed a policeman and was shot by other officers," writes the Associated Press. An anonymous reader quotes their new report: Westminster Bridge attacker Khalid Masood sent a WhatsApp message that cannot be accessed because it was encrypted by the popular messaging service, a top British security official said Sunday. British press reports suggest Masood used the messaging service owned by Facebook just minutes before the Wednesday rampage that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded.... Home Secretary Amber Rudd used appearances on BBC and Sky News to urge WhatsApp and other encrypted services to make their platforms accessible to intelligence services and police trying to carrying out lawful eavesdropping. "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," she said...

Rudd also urged technology companies to do a better job at preventing the publication of material that promotes extremism. She plans to meet with firms Thursday about setting up an industry board that would take steps to make the web less useful to extremists.

Comments

Re:Good laws should be technology neutral

[EvilSS]

What laws would they change if it was revealed 'the terrists' were communicating via snail mail.

Would they require logs of your snail mail metadata, ban envelopes ?

Well in the US the USPS actually does log all mail meta-data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking

Re:Amber Rudd is dim

[Chris Mattern]

The shear stupidity is mind-boggling

I believe you meant "sheer stupidity"

"Shear stupidity" would be running with scissors.