Amber on encryption

Here’s a few of the statements the home secretary has made about the need to address encryption.

‘Real people’ don’t need it

“To be very clear – government supports strong encryption and has no intention of banning end-to-end encryption. But the inability to gain access to encrypted data in specific and targeted instances – even with a warrant signed by a secretary of state and a senior judge – is right now severely limiting our agencies’ ability to stop terrorist attacks and bring criminals to justice.

“I know some will argue that it’s impossible to have both – that if a system is end-to-end encrypted then it’s impossible ever to access the communication. That might be true in theory. But the reality is different. Real people often prefer ease of use and a multitude of features to perfect, unbreakable security.” 31 July 2017 The Telegraph,

We used to steam open envelopes

“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 one another. 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.

“We need to make sure that our intelligence services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp. We’re not saying open up, we don’t want to go into the cloud, we don’t want to do all sorts of things like that.” 26 March 2017 The Andrew Marr Show,

I don’t need to understand how encryption works

“We will take advice from other people but I do feel that there is a sea of criticism for any of us who try and legislate in new areas, who will automatically be sneered at and laughed at for not getting it right. I don’t need to understand how encryption works to understand how it’s helping – end-to-end encryption – the criminals. I will engage with the security services to find the best way to combat that.” Quote from event at the Conservative party conference in October 2017