Five Eyes group demands ‘backdoor’ access to WhatsApp and other encrypted apps
- Justice officials in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the US say they need access to encrypted apps to police online criminality
- India and Japan, which cooperate in intelligence with the Five Eyes group, added their names to the statement
The “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance has demanded that tech companies insert “backdoors” in encrypted apps to allow law enforcement agencies the access they say they need to police online criminality.
The top justice officials of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States said in a statement released on Sunday that the growth of end-to-end encrypted apps that make official oversight impossible – like Signal, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp – “pose significant challenges to public safety”.
“There is increasing consensus across governments and international institutions that action must be taken,” they said. “While encryption is vital and privacy and cybersecurity must be protected, that should not come at the expense of wholly precluding law enforcement, and the tech industry itself, from being able to act against the most serious illegal content and activity online.”
They called on tech companies to “embed the safety of the public in system designs”, providing access to law enforcement “in a readable and usable format”.
It was the strongest call yet for programmers to include “backdoor” access to encrypted communications programmes.
India and Japan, which cooperate in intelligence with the Five Eyes group, added their names to the statement.