Pak Sahafat – Managers of popular messengers in the UK, such as WhatsApp, Viber and Signal, have protested through an open letter to the Rishi Sunak government’s bill, which oversees the weakening of the encryption system in message exchange.
According to Pak Sahafat News Agency’s report, in this letter, parts of which have been published by English media, it is stated: Weakening the encryption system, privacy and establishing extensive monitoring of people’s private communications is not the way forward.
The authors of the letter pointed out that the current laws “open the way for routine surveillance of the content of personal messages”, warning that the new bill “constitutes an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every British citizen and those who interact with them”. They are connected all over the world. It also leads hostile governments to implement similar laws.”
Under the pretext of increasing cyber security and what it calls the eradication of child abuse images in cyberspace, the British government has proposed a plan that provides more access to monitor the content of messages by regulatory bodies. Sunak’s government claims that both “end-to-end” encryption and privacy and prevention of child abuse can be guaranteed in cyberspace.
Read more:
Will Rishi Sunak’s prime ministership last until the national elections?
According to the Mail Online news site, end-to-end encryption ensures the security of messages and their readability by the recipient of the message. With this feature, WhatsApp itself cannot read the messages that are sent in this service and only acts upon the request of executive authorities for anti-terrorist purposes or to identify and remove child abusers.
The British government claims that the proposed bill does not conflict with encryption and there is no need to weaken the security system of messaging services.
But the managers of messaging companies have emphasized in their letter that “the possibility of monitoring messages without weakening the encryption system” is not possible. This letter has been signed by the directors of WhatsApp, Viber, Signal, Wire, Trima, Oxen and Element.
WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart has previously warned that the messenger would rather be banned in the UK than weaken its security in line with the government’s new internet law. The manager of this company announced that he would not be willing to comply with the bill proposed by the British government.