United front
A British government proposal to circumvent the end-to-end encryption used by services like WhatsApp has succeeded in uniting technology giants, civil rights organisations and security experts in opposition to it. The proposal was put forward by the UK security agency, GCHQ, in an effort to solve the intractable issue of how to access encrypted messages without breaking the mechanisms that underpin much of modern communication and commerce. GCHQ’s idea was to create a ‘ghost user’ which could be added to a chat or call without the users’ knowledge. An open letter rejected the idea, saying it would “undermine the authentication process that enables users to verify that they are communicating with the right people, introduce potential unintentional vulnerabilities, and increase risks that communications systems could be abused or misused.”