As Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms continue to seemingly crackdown on the individuals who are using their platforms to promote terror propaganda, it's been pushing those individuals to embrace a new platform in order to communicate. One of the platforms they are said to be increasingly using is the Telegram messaging service.
The Telegram messaging service is an encrypted messaging app.
And the UK minister, Amber Rudd, warned this week that companies need to do more to stop terrorists from using these sorts of platforms. They are urging technology companies to cooperate with law enforcement and they are encouraged to stop offering a secret place for terrorists to communicate.
Rudd has asked for help from the owners of Facebook, WhatsApp, and others, and new legislation on the matter has also been suggested.
They don't want any sort of space online available for individuals to communicate privately.
Critics of any sort of crackdown say that it's a threat to free speech to try and interfere with encryption platforms and the privacy of individuals.
There are many reasons, not just terror, for why individuals might want to make sure that they are engaged in a truly private communication with someone else. Maybe it's a journalist speaking with a sensitive source? Perhaps it's a lawyer who needs to communicate with their client? These scenarios and others might warrant the need for encrypted communication, so that the individual can try to maintain confidentiality.
Encryption is viewed by many to be extremely important and human rights and privacy advocates affirm that it should be safeguarded. This is because there are sensitive communications (like the scenarios described above) that make people around the world vulnerable: human rights activists, lawyers, and so on.
It isn't just government agencies that can access this information either, it's hackers as well. And if valuable information isn't exchanged in a privately controlled manner, it could provide for the opportunity for individuals to be exploited over the information that's been harvested.
Should there be any human communication conducted online that isn't vulnerable to the prying eyes of the state? What do you think? share your comments below!
Pics:
pixabay
Sources:
http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKBN16X0BE-OCATC
@doitvoluntarily/twitter-shuts-down-over-63-000-more-accounts-for-promoting-political-or-religious-violence
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/13/whatsapp-backdoor-allows-snooping-on-encrypted-messages