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United Kingdom Encryption Government

London Terrorist Used WhatsApp, UK Calls For Backdoors (yahoo.com) 360

Wednesday 52-year-old Khalid Masood "drove a rented SUV into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before smashing it into Parliament's gates and rushing onto the grounds, where he fatally stabbed a policeman and was shot by other officers," writes the Associated Press. An anonymous reader quotes their new report: Westminster Bridge attacker Khalid Masood sent a WhatsApp message that cannot be accessed because it was encrypted by the popular messaging service, a top British security official said Sunday. British press reports suggest Masood used the messaging service owned by Facebook just minutes before the Wednesday rampage that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded.... Home Secretary Amber Rudd used appearances on BBC and Sky News to urge WhatsApp and other encrypted services to make their platforms accessible to intelligence services and police trying to carrying out lawful eavesdropping. "We need to make sure that organizations 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 also urged technology companies to do a better job at preventing the publication of material that promotes extremism. She plans to meet with firms Thursday about setting up an industry board that would take steps to make the web less useful to extremists.

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London Terrorist Used WhatsApp, UK Calls For Backdoors

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  • no thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26, 2017 @03:37PM (#54114307)

    This is the same lady who thinks that they need to hire the people who "know the right hashcodes to fight terrorists."

    She has no place conjecturing on the usefulness of the free web to a potted plant, let alone to extremists (whose membership increasingly include Western government officials)

    • Re: no thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26, 2017 @03:53PM (#54114389)

      Seriously. Boo hoo lady, you didn't get to hear the terrorist's message. Thank god for that. Had you heard his message it might corrupt you into accepting his martyrdom. The whole point of terrorism is that they can't go to war or they will lose, so they attack us in hopes that we will make more restrictive laws and this lady is taking the bait.

      • they attack us in hopes that they can destroy us

        Fixed that for you.

      • Or worse, she is an agent :D

      • they attack us in hopes that we will make more restrictive laws

        Well, not exactly. Getting crypto banned isn't the end-game of Islamic terrorism, but yes, it is more about the response than the body-count.

        Schneier wrote an excellent piece on this topic: "What the Terrorists Want". [schneier.com]

    • "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" ... privately.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26, 2017 @03:41PM (#54114333)

    Why the focus on the communication technology? Its role in these sorts of incidents seems minor compared to the effect and involvement of vehicular technology. It wasn't chat software causing the physical harm; it was vehicles.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      +1 car and truck manufacturers need to put protections in place so that extremists cant use their vehicles.

      Why should we have to go to the airport to be strip searched and scanned for weapons and explosives ? Our cars can be doing that to us every time we get in !! Problem solved

      Also it would be useful if manufacturers put in a backdoor so that after all extremists are neutralized we can go after the politically inconvenient

      J/k the only thing needing a backdoor is govt , so we can sneak in some rational thi

    • I'll bet he didn't prepay the Congestion Charge when he decided to drive into central London, leaving his family on the hook for it. That's just rude. Pollution has a cost, you know.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why the focus on the communication technology?

      Because it is so easy to abuse without getting caught. Remember that most governments that hold elections consider their own population as the biggest threat to the current regime. This Amber Rudd person is just parroting what that creepy James Comey guy says, claiming that tapping all communications will end terrorism. It won't. According to the article the message was sent "just minutes" before the attack. That means that even if there was magical instant interception, the attack would have already been h

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      When all you have is methods that got used in the Soviet Union and Ireland, every issue has to fit a voice print, digital collection pattern.
      The security services now expect everyone to have a digital device and use it.
      Communication technology is what had the over time, funding, the expansion in staff, political support and contracts for new methods.
      So the security services are now all ready for the methods they saw the Soviet Union use or that got used in Ireland
      Communication technology took funding
    • I would like to see one shred of evidence that having so-called backdoors would have prevented the London tragedy.

      Maybe if some wacko Eagle Eye supercomputer [imdb.com] were monitoring and evaluating all communications at all times in real-time, maybe something could be sniffed out, and on that day we shall all bow down to our robot overlords. Until then, you're talking about creating a mile-high haystack of data, and hiring humans to eaves-drop and search through it day and night for a needle. I mean, politicians r

      • ... he's the reason the storm-troopers in riot gear tore your house down, zip-tied your family and shot your goldfish, only to find your 10-year-old pulling pranks on his iPad.

        Won't someone think of the goldfish?

    • If your goal is to control all people you need to control all speech. Having bad men do bad things makes a handy excuse to implement those controls.
    • The police have already publicly declared that they think that this terrorist worked alone.

      That means there's no chance that the encrypted WhatsApp message that they found on his phone is relevant in any significant way to their enquiries.

      This is just another illigitimate political attempt to gain power without understanding how encryption works.

  • Amber Rudd is dim (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Harold Halloway ( 1047486 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @03:45PM (#54114347)

    She's simply the latest of a long line of British ministers who don't really understand the first thing about the Internet and its associated technologies.

    Hilariously, in the same interview she claimed that Google was at fault because it was far to easy to find ‘stabbing instructions’ online.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @04:09PM (#54114475) Homepage Journal

      The shear stupidity is mind-boggling. In the very same sentence she acknowledges that there are many other similar apps. Surely she must be aware that they are not all under UK jurisdiction...

      This sounds very much like she has been briefed by security services looking for more powers and/or to create the impression that people who use encryption are up to no good. Seeing an opportunity to look tough and be seen to be doing something she repeats the words without understanding what they mean, or how stupid she looks.

      • I'm sure she is fully aware there are other apps not covered by UK laws. All that will happen is that it will become illegal to use those apps without back doors and anyone suspected of extremist views will eventually be checked to see if they are using them. If so, they will be arrested and charged before they plow through a crowd of people or whatever. It isn't a hard problem to solve.

      • The shear stupidity is mind-boggling. In the very same sentence she acknowledges that there are many other similar apps. Surely she must be aware that they are not all under UK jurisdiction...

        It has occurred to me that these folks willing to die to get in the headlines might not use a site for their last words if they believed it to be openly compromised by the State.

        Some of us already believe the State is listening to whatever it can, for our safety and all that, so I suppose it's possible Amber Rudd and her counterparts already have a way into the mainstream social platforms... yet are forced to plead otherwise in public.

      • Re:Amber Rudd is dim (Score:5, Informative)

        by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @05:09PM (#54114819)

        The shear stupidity is mind-boggling

        I believe you meant "sheer stupidity"

        "Shear stupidity" would be running with scissors.

  • Scapegoating (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26, 2017 @03:56PM (#54114409)

    Right now its looking pretty bad for the intellectual elite over there.
    - He was screened by police several times
    - Made an extremist while in her magisty's pleasure

    And now the police are saying "If we read *that message* of him saying 'god be with me', *then* they would know what he was upto and what he was doing".

    Looks more like they're trying to find a scape goat.

  • What laws would they change if it was revealed 'the terrists' were communicating via snail mail.

    Would they require logs of your snail mail metadata, ban envelopes ?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Ms Rudd already covered that:

      Referring to Whatsapp's system of end-to-end encryption, she said: "It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide.

      "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 each other.

      "It used to be that people would steam open envelopes or listen in on phones when they wanted to find out what people were doing - legally, through warrantry - b

      • by davecb ( 6526 )
        They need to serve the warrent on the sender, as he's the person wih the keys, not whatsapp.
        Of course, he's dead, so it's not going to be very helpfull.
      • by bug1 ( 96678 )

        I really should have rtfa, but there is a difference between mass surveillance and targeted surveillance.

        The old school surveillance was targeted, because it just didnt make sense to waste all that manpower. Now that its cheaper to do mass-surveillance.

        As a society we have to accept target surveillance (unfortunetly), but software cant be back-doored with any guarantee that it will be only used in targeted surveillance.

        Mass surveillance will always be immoral, because its punishing the innocent to try and p

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Rudd also urged technology companies to do a better job at preventing the publication of material that promotes extremism.

      So apparently the problem is too much free speech and too much privacy.

      To get our intellectual freedom back, we're going to need a movement as powerful as the civil rights movement. Saying this stupid shit should be as taboo as saying a racial slur! This "Amber Rudd" needs to be made an example of. Really rake her over the coals. "You're advocating what?" "Why do you hate freedom?"

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @05:03PM (#54114789)

      What laws would they change if it was revealed 'the terrists' were communicating via snail mail.

      Would they require logs of your snail mail metadata, ban envelopes ?

      Well in the US the USPS actually does log all mail meta-data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking [wikipedia.org]

  • Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by l0n3s0m3phr34k ( 2613107 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @03:56PM (#54114413)
    Because it's SO difficult for someone to write a new app with no backdoors. Britain can't stop this; they can pass all the laws they want. But terrorists really don't care what the law says by definition. Plus it is a proven fact that British police [telegraph.co.uk] can't stay within the lines [softpedia.com] when it comes to information like this.
    • This guy was already being investigated. So when they find they cannot get into an app or whatever presumably by sniffing packets from his IP address, they simply arrest him before he kills people.

      • by fnj ( 64210 )

        And if a majority of all messages exchanged online in the world were encrypted? Would they arrest a majority of all the citizens of the world?

    • is a terrorist suspect.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The UK has two options.
      Use the GCHQ as it did in Ireland. Collect everything, sort and act on the information gathered.
      It took Ireland a while to work out why its support from the USA was not flowing as well as expected and the US east coast actions of the UK government.
      Offers to change sides got made to most people of interest to the UK.
      That needed helicopters, car tracking, telephone tracking, voice prints, people who could work in Ireland and not be noticed in any local community.

      The problem fo
  • by ThatsNotPudding ( 1045640 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @04:03PM (#54114437)
    Move to that Utopian paradise where the citizens' never have to fret about terrorist attacks.

    North Korea.
  • ...not the symptoms.

    Crypto everywhere.

  • I'm puzzled. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @04:31PM (#54114603) Homepage Journal

    When I use WhatsApp through my phone, it shows the history of my conversations. Presumably the police have recovered Masoods phone, can use one of the numerous ways to get into it, and can thus see what messages he sent over WhatsApp and to whom.

    In short, why the hell can't Plod read Masoods last words over WhatsApp? Also if they knew he used WhatsApp, that shows they have either broken into his phone already or picked up some data from his ISP already.

    Further, the latest UK Investigatory Powers Act regarding security only wanted metadata, not content, and a great deal of effort was spent convincing the general public that this was all that is needed.

    So my question is, is my view of the situation wrong or is Amber Rudd technologically clueless?

    • by Teun ( 17872 )
      Amber is probably technically clueless but you have to consider reading a vague message to 'unknown' is still not very useful as WhatsApp does not necessarily show the name of the receiver.
      So metadata would be very useful.

      BTW, I use Signal and when in a Five Eyes nation it is over VPN.
    • by davecb ( 6526 )
      Somebody in the police knows that, but his memo was summarized 83 times before it became part of the PM's briefing papers, and so she couldn't figure out what "his phone knows" meant.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Consider past collection efforts in Ireland. The UK security services sorted every call and voice print in Ireland. Every call between Ireland and the USA, every call for support and funds flowing from the USA to Ireland. The UK followed Irish funding and support globally. Shipments, cash, human rights groups, front companies, faith groups, political support, lawyers, anything and anyone that supported Irish issues. Once found the UK acted globally to stop all such support for Irish issues.
      Action to
  • Subject line says it all.

  • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @05:14PM (#54114847) Journal

    He had been investigated years ago, but cleared by the security services.

    So:
    1. Either they want to monitor everybody's communications, or
    2. They are lying about the effect of having access to WhatsApp messages, or
    3. This is just another excuse to monitor everyone's communications.

    I believe that western civilization is in the process (if it hasn't already happened) of being taken over by the security apparatus, under the pretext of "protecting" us (in the same was as "devout muslims" "protect" their women by making them wear veils.

    It's all about control under the guise of "protection". As I type that, I realize that it sounds just like the mafia.

  • Turn it around (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Say I'm living in a repressive society. I NEED to destroy or kill government officials to live free.

    If I am unable to communicate, then I am left nude with no recourse alone and helpless.

    If I can communicate, I can form a revolution, I can change society for the better and improve all of our lives.

    We cannot destroy our freedom of expression

    "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

    The terrorist killed 3 people. There are billions

  • by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @05:49PM (#54114971)
    Think this through - the terrorist sent a message "as he was driving". Being able to access the message after the fact does NOT stop the terrorism. The next step, and the ONLY way this will work is constant - real time - monitoring of all communication systems for all platforms everywhere. When a potential "hit" it comes across, the GPS in the device is located and tracked. Again, it may not have been soon enough, but demanding a back by law enforcement demonstrates the desire for a complete dystopian world.
    Of course then terrorists just switch to encrypted radios. Which will imply it will be illegal for non-military to own such devices.
    Is this the world we want?
  • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @06:27PM (#54115147) Journal

    It is now common knowledge that all western governments have so many way to monitor people that it is offensive for them to suggest they need more powers to have more surveillance. That western powers spread their nets so far across our "democracy" and not in a focused manner means they are obviously ineffective in filling their mandate of protecting the people from terrorist threats. And because they are so ineffectual against terrorism they use that as justification to spread their net even wider.

    So let us all not pretend that the state has any concern for stopping terrorism because terrorism has no impact on the state, it only impact the populous. If terrorism occurs then that just adds another reason for clamping down on the populous even more. We are being treated with the contempt we deserve for not steadfastly protecting democracy.

    For decades Islamic human rights violations went ignored by western powers so any pandering to stopping extremism should be viewed as the bullshit it is. Islamic extremism is a good reason for the state to become even more overt in its quest to police the state because power begets power. And that's good for business because they are who pay for the politicians to operate the inverted totalitarian state we live in.

    • by Deep Esophagus ( 686515 ) on Sunday March 26, 2017 @08:02PM (#54115527)

      Especially in this case. From the summary:

      British press reports suggest Masood used the messaging service owned by Facebook just minutes before the Wednesday rampage that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded..

      Even if he had sent in plaintext "GONNA DRIVE THROUGH A CROWD OF PEOPLE AND KILL AS MANY AS I CAN!!!" minutes before doing so, how could they have stopped him? Hell, he could have called police and told them explicitly where he was and what he was doing, maybe even sent a live video feed from his phone while he was doing it.

      Security theatre.

  • ...they shouldn't have shot him dead then? He was only armed with a knife at that point, and while clearly an extremely dangerous and murderous person, didn't actually need to have been shot three times in the chest in order to stop him.

    I'm not suggesting that the police officer who fired on him acted in anything other than the way he was trained to, but if he was still alive, we could have asked him what on earth he thought he was up to. I'd expect that he'd just turn out to be a nutcase, who would have f

    • by Indy1 ( 99447 )

      No offense, but your incredible ignorance on the proper use of deadly force is mind blowing.

      He was "only" armed with a knife - a knife is a dangerous deadly weapon that routinely kills people. There's a reason that US based law enforcement will shoot the hell out of you if you have a knife and charge them, and come within 21 feet. See Tueller Drill.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      And how do you know he didn't need to be shot 3 times in the chest? The proper technique when using deadly force to defend y

      • No offence taken. But this was in the UK, not the US, where up until yesterday shooting people armed with a knife wasn't common practise. Or maybe it is now, I haven't lived there in a while.
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday March 27, 2017 @06:15AM (#54117391)

    Seriously, she's Britain's answer to Sarah Palin. Or rather, an answer to a question nobody asked.

    And while Palin is at least a looker, Rudd also has this "used car" air about her. This woman has so far in her total career never said a single sentence that wasn't a tear-soaked platitude, an "outraged demand" that simply echoed what everyone else has already been saying or simply and plainly stupid. I really have no idea what service she could provide other than being the bad example on how NOT to do something.

    Seriously. When asked at her funeral to say anything good about her, all you can sensibly say is "she died".

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