What the commentators said

Acts of terror will never “alter the way we live and how politicans behave”. That is the polite fiction we like to subscribe to at times like this, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. Sadly, it’s not true. In 1989, the IRA terror campaign led to Downing Street being closed off behind gates; the legacy of 9/11 is that Whitehall is now littered with bollards and barriers; and in 2004, a giant, airtight glass screen was installed in the Commons to protect MPS from the public gallery. Last week’s atrocity will lead to further security measures. One will look upon the inevitable but necessary introduction of a heavier armed presence at the gates of the Palace of Westminster as a “little win for terror”, though it’s surely good news that social media companies are coming under huge pressure to stop facilitating the spread of extremist ideology.

But ministers seem clueless about how this technology works, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Amber Rudd is apparently unaware that Whatsapp can’t possibly hand over Masood’s final messages, because – thanks to its “end-to-end encryption” system – it doesn’t have them, and never did. As for the idea that these firms should offer security services a “back door” into their software to allow future messages to be intercepted, that would undermine everyone else’s security and simply prompt terrorists to abandon these sites for others. Besides, increasingly the security services “no longer bother to intercept communications – they prefer to hack devices directly”. The Government is on “firmer ground” with its complaints about the social media giants hosting jihadist propaganda, said Paul Goodman on Conservativehome.com. Google already removes a lot of material – “92 million Youtube videos last year, apparently” – but more needs to be done. These firms are ducking their responsibilities, said James Forsyth in The Spectator. Apparently, one was even reluctant to remove an online guide to which truck to rent to cause most deaths in a vehicle attack. “The steps various tech companies have taken to deal with child sexual exploitation online shows that they can do more. And they should.”