Whatsapp, Chat Apps Backdoor Revisited Following London Attack

In the wake of last week’s attack on the Houses of Parliament in London, British politicians are now making demands for chat apps, including WhatsApp, to provide backdoor access to police and security forces. The Financial Times said the backdoor will help government security to check and monitor terrorist communications.

WhatsApp, a social media chat app, is just one of the many apps which adopted a technique by default called end-to-end encryption, which allows to encrypt their messages even though it passes the own technology company’s servers. This means, not even WhatsApp has access to their user’s messages, BBC said.

WhatsApp was discovered to be Khalid Masood’s communication app of choice minutes before he carried out his killings. He killed four people near Britain's Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

UK home secretary Amber Rudd has been making rounds in the media and stated that the government’s failure to prevent such things from happening should be a wake-up call to the companies who adopt this feature on their apps. Rudd, who is scheduled to meet Google, Facebook and Twitter this week, said, "They're going to get a lot more than a ticking off. It is absurd to have a situation where terrorists are talking to each other on a formal platform and it can't be accessed. I need to find a solution with them for that."

She also said in a different interview, "We need to make sure that our intelligence services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp."