In response to proposed legislation in the United Kingdom, messaging applications that provide end-to-end encryption on private chat services have spoken out against it.
Companies including WhatsApp, Session, Signal, Element, Threema, Viber, and Wire have joined together to protest the Online Safety Bill, claiming that it “could give an unelected official the power to weaken the privacy of billions of people around the world” in an open letter.
They demanded that the government undo the elements of the bill that will make people less safe in the UK and elsewhere.
The technology companies argued that it is not too late to make sure the Bill protects end-to-end encryption and upholds the human right to privacy as proclaimed by the government. WhatsApp end-to-end encryption was mentioned as a powerful safeguard against common online dangers including phishing and identity theft.
In its current form, the bill “could break end-to-end encryption, opening the door to routine, general, and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages of friends, family members, employees, executives, journalists, human rights activists, and even politicians themselves,” the letter reads.
The bill may end end to end encryption on WhatsApp and other apps
It said the Bill did not offer adequate security for encryption and that, if passed as is, OFCOM may attempt to mandate proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services.
Even though they claim to understand the value of privacy and security, proponents of mass surveillance insist that it can be done without jeopardizing end-to-end encryption. In reality, however, this is impossible.
Attempts by the UK government to enforce backdoor requirements, it was claimed, represent “a paradigm shift that raises a host of serious problems with potentially dire consequences” from the United Nations.
Companies like WhatsApp, claiming to offer end-to-end encrypted products and services worldwide claimed they could not compromise security in order to please any one government.
The UK government should reconsider the Bill immediately and make changes that would incentivize businesses to increase the level of privacy and security they provide to UK citizens. It determined that weakening encryption, compromising privacy, and establishing widespread surveillance of people’s private conversations was not the way ahead.
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