Political

Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter urge UK to guarantee encryption in law

Apple opposes plans to weaken encryption

Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have made a joint submission on the UK’s draft Investigatory Powers Bill that urges the government to guarantee encryption in law…

“We reject any proposals that would require companies to deliberately weaken the security of their products via backdoors, forced decryption, or any other means. We therefore have concerns that the Bill includes “obligations relating to the removal of electronic protection applied by a relevant operator to any communication or data” and that these are explicitly intended to apply extraterritorially with limited protections for overseas providers… [We] suggest that the Bill expressly state that nothing in the Bill should be construed to require a company to weaken or defeat its security measures.” [The Next Web]

Apple has also expressed a similar view, and the common thread across all these technology companies is the argument that secure encryption stops crime, for example by securing financial transactions which millions of people make each day.

Adding in back doors ends up therefore weakening our security and privacy, and helps criminals, because back doors are never fully secure and only usable by good guys. They end up being used for ill as well.

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