Tales of the encrypt
Brits push app makers to open terrorists’ chats
A top British official on Sunday asked tech companies to help anti-terrorism investigators by breaking their own encryption in cases of national security.
London jihadist Khalid Masood sent a message on the WhatsApp service — which allows for completely encrypted communications — moments before his deadly rampage on Wednesday, prompting Home Secretary Amber Rudd to seek support from tech giants.
She appeared on both BBC and Sky News, urging WhatsApp and other encrypted messenger services to allow law enforcement access to fight evildoers like Masood.
“It’s completely unacceptable” for these messages to be out of reach, she told the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”
“We need to make sure that or- ganizations 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’s comments harkened back to the FBI’s short-lived battle with Apple when feds grabbed San Bernardino mass killer Syed Farook’s locked phone.
Apple refused to unlock it but feds eventually broke the security code without Apple’s help.
Rudd said she plans to convene a meeting of tech execs — and read them the riot act.
“They’re going to get a lot more than a ticking off [a stern lecture],” Rudd told Sky’s “Sophy Ridge on Sunday.”
A rep for Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, said on Sunday: “We are horrified at the attack carried out in London earlier this week and are cooperating with law enforcement as they continue their investigations.”
In the days since Masood’s rampage, a complicated picture of the bloodthirsty zealot has emerged, both as a loving, sweet schoolboy and as a violent adult.
“He wasn’t a proper Muslim,” one-time landlord Cassie Havard told The Sun. “He [had sex with] prostitutes, smoked copious amounts of crack and stuck knives in people’s faces.”
Havard said there was also a paranoid, violent streak to Masood — also known as Adrian Emls — just under the surface.
“He was a madman. After one four-day crack session, one druggie pal got paranoid and accused him of being an undercover cop,” she said.
“Adrian went absolutely wild and ran to the kitchen to grab the biggest knife he could find. He went back in the room and slashed the guy’s face to pieces. It was horrific, but he always had that darker side about him.”
Masood, 52, killed four people during his attack against innocent pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and a constable outside the Parliament building. He was eventually shot and killed by police.