Amber Rudd condemned WhatsApp for failing to reveal messages to the authorities
For the first time in human history, fanatics can instantly talk to each other using software which scrambles their messages so no-one else can read them.
This is handy for anyone who wants to communicate in total secrecy, such as journalists or campaigners living under repressive regimes.
It is also a gift for extremists who can use apps to plot atrocities, carry out recruitment campaigns and stay in touch with terror commanders.
A tech expert's view on why Home Secretary Amber Rudd is wrong about encryption
“We understand why governments want to be able to access the content in these messages but, unfortunately, banning encryption in order to get to the communications of a select few opens the door to the communications of many, and renders us all less secure and our lives less private.
“If you build a back door, it’s there for everybody to access. And if you store that data you collect, even in encrypted form, how secure is it? All these data breaches we hear about show our privacy is regularly being breached by hackers, so the action suggested by the Home Secretary would only open us all up to further invasions of privacy.
“A lot of these terrorist organisations are already well resourced. It would be naïve of us to think that by removing the public methods of encryption which we use to protect our identity, our freedom of speech and to keep us safe from persecution, that those terrorist organisations will not develop alternative methods to encrypt their communications. If this were to happen, we’d only be pushing these people further underground, presenting a greater challenge to security intelligence services.”
by Tony Anscombe, ambassador and senior security evangelist at Avast
It was later claimed that Whatsapp refused to let MI5 decode the encrypted messages, prompting Home Secretary Amber Rudd to say it is “completely unacceptable” for extremists to be able to use encryption to dodge security services.
She told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “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 is absurd that we can have a situation where you have terrorists talking to each other on a formal platform."
However, WhatsApp is not the only encrypted communications app.
The most popular app among extremists is called Telegram, which has been used to post threats to attack cities including London.
It was even used to publish bizarre Christmas messages in which zealots appeared to threaten to kill Santa Claus and share a banned manual entitled “The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook“ which explains how to make poison.
Jihadi Adel Kermiche also used the app to write a message which said “you take a knife, you go into a church, you cause carnage” before killing a French priest.
This image appears to threaten a year of mayhem in 2017 and was sent at the end of last year
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These messages were posted on channels used by dozens or potentially hundreds of terrorists.
Unless you're invited into a Telegram or WhatsApp group, you won't be able to read its contents.
Until recently, ISIS extremists were also using an app called Viber which also offers the ability to encrypt messages.
This is now believed to have been ditched because it allegedly keeps a record of the messages users have sent.
On Twitter, one member of ISIS advised fellow jihadis to avoid Viber and other apps including WhatsApp.
He wrote: "We warn everyone to be cautious to even install these applications on phones…for they pose too great a risk."
The British terrorist Junaid Hussain, who renamed himself Abu Hussain al-Britani, used the apps Kik and Surespot to stay in touch with fellow extremists in Britain.
Amber Rudd on end-to-end encryption by likes of WhatsApp after Khalid Massod's Westminster terror attack
SUN SAYS: The Home Secretary was right to reprimand tech companies – terrorists should have no place to hide
There really shouldn’t be any need to bring in new laws to force tech companies to cooperate with the security services.
But unless they start to behave properly there will be no alternative.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is right to read them the riot act and tell them the terrorists should have no place to hide.
Because that’s just what WhatsApp — owned by Facebook — lets them do. By encrypting messages, it stops the police being able to track terror plots.
They can’t even investigate in the aftermath of a terrorist atrocity, as with the WhatsApp messages Khalid Masood sent before he carried out his attack last week.
Google allows terrorists to post training videos on YouTube and it refuses to remove other dangerous sites on its servers.
Ms Rudd is hopeful that when she hauls a bunch of them in to the Home Office on Thursday, they’ll agree to do the right thing.
If they’d any sense of humility, they would do. But that’s the last word anyone could use to describe them.
Their defining feature is their arrogance.
The likes of Facebook and Google behave as if they are bigger and more important than any nation or elected politician.
On past form, all they’ll do after meeting Ms Rudd is tell their PR merchants to carry on defending the indefensible.
It’s time they started to face the consequences of their behaviour.
He approached our undercover reporter and used Kik to ask him to “do something over there”, promising an “easy ticket to jannah (paradise)”.
When we logged on, he warned: “Don't mention anything to anyone. Only use SureSpot it’s secure."
There are dozens of other secure communications apps including the wildly popular Facebook Messenger, which now has a function called "Secret Message" which uses encryption.
Apple's Facetime and iMessage are also encrypted, with the tech giant saying "the things you rely on every day should keep your personal information safe".
So will the next terrorist atrocity be planned on Facebook or iMessage?
We may never know, because the tech firms might not tell us.
Currently, it's difficult if not impossible for spies to crack terrorists' encrypted messages and the firms who designed the software seem unwilling to give security services a "backdoor" into the apps.
Until the tech industry budges, terrorists will be able to communicate in total secrecy - something that should trouble us all.
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