UK home secretary Amber Rudd says 'real people' don't need end-to-end encryption | Business Insider

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UK home secretary Amber Rudd has called on messaging apps like WhatsApp to ditch end-to-end encryption, arguing that it aids terrorists. [She] said that “real people” don’t need the feature and that tech companies should do more to help the authorities deal with security threats.

From UK home secretary Amber Rudd says 'real people' don't need end-to-end encryption | Business Insider

I am not privy to this level of decision making in the body politics, but I suppose that Amber’s plan is to make everyone else’s communications as vulnerable to hackers, pranksters and agents of foreign powers as MPs’ communications are.

Parliament has been hit by a “sustained and determined” cyber-attack by hackers attempting to gain access to MPs’ and their staffers’ email accounts… Fewer than 90 email accounts were compromised during the cyber attack on Westminster, sources told the Press Association.

From Cyber-attack on parliament leaves MPs unable to access emails | Politics | The Guardian

Why this is considered a good idea by the Home Secretary is entirely unclear. Presumably she thinks that if everyone can read everyone else’s messages then it will not only add to the gaiety of the nation but will render terrorists unable to communicate. How wrong can you be? If you make it against the law to send encrypted messages, then the terrorists will simply switch to encryption schemes that don’t look like encrypted messages. Surely a noted historian such as Amber is aware of