What’s up with our clueless ministers?
I’M AMAZED by the technical ignorance of our politicians. The other day, Home Secretary Amber Rudd was proclaiming that the end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp messages favours terrorists, and that WhatsApp should decode the last messages Khalid Masood sent immediately before commiting the Westminster atrocity and hand them over to the security services. Oh dear: the splashing sound of politicians getting far out of their depth is getting louder. The end-to-end encryption system isn’t readable, not even by WhatsApp. And it was designed this way to avoid predictable demands by organisations such as the FBI and GCHQ for content to be revealed. WhatsApp’s use of dynamic encryption keys means the scrambling changes from message to message. So it’s simply impossible for any central body to unscramble them. Next, the hapless Ms Rudd demanded that WhatsApp build in a ‘back door’ so it can read the messages when presented with a court order. What a fatuous demand: Ms Rudd can’t have thought for a moment before making it. She could perhaps dragoon a large company with a UK presence to build in such a back door, but anyone who wished to retain their privacy would immediately stop using WhatsApp and start using other encryption apps, which have been created by individuals and released anonymously on the app market — which, crucially, politicians can’t control. Phone calls routed through the internet rather than through the phone network — such as Skype — are already non-trackable, and this form of technology will spread. I wish politicians would learn about technical stuff before they start asking for the impossible.
ROD BUCK, Sheffield.