TERROR WAR ON WESTMINSTER
Home Secretary Amber Rudd blasts internet ‘secret places’ Government eyes new laws to crack down on propaganda
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SECURITY services are unable to access encrypted WhatsApp messages like those sent by Westminster terrorist Khalid Masood, the Home Secretary warned yesterday.
It is totally unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide AMBER RUDD
Amber Rudd slammed the “completely unacceptable” use of encryption by the Facebook-owned messaging service, which was used by the killer in the run-up to Wednesday’s attack in London.
Rudd said: “We can’t have a situation where terrorists can talk to each other, where this terrorist sent a WhatsApp message and it can’t be accessed.”
WhatsApp is a mobile-to-mobile messaging service used by more than one billion people worldwide.
Since last year, all its messages have been encrypted – meaning they cannot be read if intercepted by a third party.
It emerged on Friday that Masood had been logged on to the service just moments before he embarked on his killing spree on Westminster Bridge.
Rudd accused WhatsApp and other online services of providing a “secret place” for terrorists to chat by keeping messages private.
She said: “It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide.
“We need to make sure organisations like WhatsApp – and there are plenty of others – don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.”
Rudd will haul in executives from Facebook and other major tech firms for a Whitehall summit on Thursday, at which she will demand they do more to fight terror.
Security Minister Ben Wallace said he was “not ruling anything out” regarding possible new laws to force them to act.
But it is unclear how the Government could enforce them against US media firms.
Rob Wainwright, director of the EU’s law-enforcement agency Europol, backed Rudd. He said: “Something has to be done to make sure we can apply a more consistent form of interception of communication in all parts of the ways in which terrorists invade our lives.”
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson tore into social media firms who have failed to clamp down on hate-filled propaganda.
Johnson said: “They need to stop making money out of violent material. Evil flourishes when good men do nothing and that’s what’s happening here.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn insisted the balance is currently “about right” between keeping an eye on terrorists and maintaining people’s privacy.
And Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman Brian Paddick said what Rudd was proposing was “draconian”.
He said: “These terrorists want to destroy our freedoms and undermine our democratic society.
“By implementing draconian laws that limit our civil liberties, we would be playing into their hands.” The row came as MPs continue to debate whether security needs to be tightened at Parliament following the murder of PC Keith Palmer at the hands of crazed Masood. House of Commons leader David Lidington yesterday denied armed police had been removed from Parliament’s Carriage Gates – where Masood accessed the estate – due to protests from MPs. He said: “The idea that protests from MPs lead to operational changes is untrue. “What’s happened in the last couple of years is that the security arrangements in New Palace Yard have actually been strengthened.” MP Tobias Ellwood, who battled in vain to save PC Palmer, yesterday broke his silence to deny he is a hero. The Foreign Office Minister said: “He was the hero, not me. I don’t deserve the praise because I couldn’t save him. “I played only a small part that day, doing what I was taught to do. “It is right that we concentrate our thoughts on the victims as we stand side by side to protect all that we hold dear.”