UK government ministers have been warned that WhatsApp could disappear from the UK. It centres around the online safety bill, a major piece of legislation that will affect almost every area of online life in the UK.
The bill is currently making its way through the House of Lords on its way to becoming law. It would give regulator Ofcom the power to make social networks use tech to tackle content related to things like terrorism and child sexual abuse - it makes a provision for fines of up to 10% of global turnover for non-compliance, according to a report in the Guardian.
However, the Guardian reports, it would cause a problem for messaging services such as WhatsApp. That's because they use end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which makes it technologically impossible to read users' message without breaking their privacy promises to people using the service. And that, they say, is not something they will do.
According to the Guardian, a coalition of providers, including WhatsApp and Signal, wrote in an open letter last month: “The bill provides no explicit protection for encryption and if implemented as written, could empower Ofcom to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services, nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.”
WhatsApp’s chief, Will Cathcart, told the Guardian in March: “Ninety-eight per cent of our users are outside the UK. They do not want us to lower the security of the product, and just as a straightforward matter, it would be an odd choice for us to choose to lower the security of the product in a way that would affect those 98% of users.”
This has resulted in a warning that services such as WhatsApp will simply leave the UK, which is what member of the House of Lords, Claire Fox, told the upper chamber last week.
She said: “These services, such as WhatsApp, will potentially leave the UK. This is not like threatening to storm off. It is not done in any kind of pique in that way. In putting enormous pressure on these platforms to scan communications, we must remember that they are global platforms.
“They have a system that works for billions of people all around the world. A relatively small market such as the UK is not something for which they would compromise their billions of users around the world.”
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A Home Office spokesperson told the Guardian: “We support strong encryption, but this cannot come at the cost of public safety. Tech companies have a moral duty to ensure they are not blinding themselves and law enforcement to the unprecedented levels of child sexual abuse on their platforms. The online safety bill in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption.
“Where it is the only effective, proportionate and necessary action available, Ofcom will be able to direct platforms to use accredited technology, or make best endeavours to develop new technology, to accurately identify child sexual abuse content, so it can be taken down and the despicable predators brought to justice.”
Damian Collins, the Conservative MP who chaired a Westminster committee scrutinising the bill, said he did not support one amendment introduced to try to protect end-to-end encryption, adding: “I don’t think you want to give companies subjective grounds for deciding whether or not they need to comply with the duties set out in the bill.”
Mr Collins added that the bill did not attack encryption because it would only require messaging companies sharing information that they have access to – which does not include message content. However, he said authorities should be able to access the background data behind users, including data about usage of the app, contacts, location and names of user groups.
