Roger Fingas
France's interior minister on Thursday announced plans to meet with a German counterpart and tackle the issue of encrypted messaging apps, which he argued are preventing intelligence agencies from fighting terrorism.
The two will get together on Aug. 23 in Paris, and discuss a European plan with the ultimate goal of international action, Reuters said. France's Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters that encryption is a "central issue" in combating terrorism.
"France will make proposals. I have sent a number of them to my Germany colleague," he added.
France has been hit with a number of Islamist terrorist attacks in the past two years. In a recent incident involving the murder of a priest in Rouen, one of the attackers regularly communicated with followers via Telegram, a messaging app mostly popular outside the U.S. Like Signal, WhatsApp, and Apple's own Messages, Telegram offers end-to-end encryption — something so secure that even an app's creators can't intercept conversations.
Spy and law enforcement agencies around the world have regularly complained about encryption causing communications to "go dark." A number of corporations and privacy groups, Apple among them, have countered that many well-intentioned individuals need the technology as protection against hackers, criminals, and potentially malicious government entities.
It's not clear what kind of measures French and European governments might take, but some U.S. politicians and officials have backed measures that would force app creators to offer a backdoor, and/or decryption on demand. To date these haven't succeeded, and companies like Apple have argued that they would fundamentally weaken security.
Andrew Orr
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
30 Comments
Ban math.
Sheesh!
They're already screwed. Too late for them now. :#
The facts of the matter are that the worst German leader since WWII, that vile woman AKA Merkel, invited the entire world to migrate to Germany and the EU. Terrorists all over the world also heard her call, and they've taken her up on her offer.
Now there are mass rapes and sexual assaults everywhere. :# The worst mass rapes and sexual assaults in Germany since the fall of Berlin in 1945. Well done my EU friends! :#
And let's not even mention terrorists shooting people up everywhere, terrorists driving large trucks through crowds of people, and terrorists blowing themselves up left and right. :#
These retards think that encryption is the problem? :#
All I have to say is, hahaha! What a bunch of totally clueless, pathetic people, who are so clueless, that their cluelessness is downright dangerous, and has gotten so many people killed already.
Keep up the good work, my EU friends. :#
It's no wonder that the UK wisely chose to break away from you lot. You're a bunch of deranged lunatics and pathetic appeasers and I laugh in your general direction.
So their solution is mass 24/7 spying on everyone because that's the only chance they have of catching a terrorist before they do anything by reading text messages. After the fact is pretty pointless. In general their dead at that point. Besides most all of these terrorists have been out in the open using no encryption!!!
Importing a bunch of terrorists into your country also doesn't help. Instead in fixing their own country from there own radical Muslims, they flee to other countries and bring the same old crap with them including the terrorists. Along with the hate and everything else. You go into these other country's and don't change and adapt but pretend your in little Iraq, or little Syria. The problems are not being fixed, the problems are now just spreading to other countries.