British PM May wants tech firms' help to access user messages

Statement comes a day after British interior minister said end-to-end encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May wants technology firms to help law enforcement agencies gain access to messages sent using their platforms if needed, but how they do that is up to the companies themselves, her spokesperson said on Monday.

"These are companies which have fabulous technical expertise, are world leading, and where they can do more to assist we would like them to do so," the spokesperson told reporters.



"If there are circumstances where law enforcement agencies need to be able to access the contents, they should be able to do so. How that is achieved, I think, is a matter for the talks later in the week."

Earlier on Sunday, British interior minister Amber Rudd said end-to-end encryption of messages offered by services like Whatsapp are “completely unacceptable” and there should be no “secret place for terrorists to communicate”.

Local media have reported that shortly before launching an attack that killed four people including a policeman near Britain’s parliament in central London, Khalid Masood sent an encrypted message via Whatsapp.



“That is my view – it is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide. We need to make sure organisations like Whatsapp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other,” Rudd told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

“We need to make sure that our intelligence services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp.”