The British Interior Minister said that real people do not need encryption

Although even the UN has recognized anonymity and the use of encryption for basic human rights , some individual statesmen (and women) think differently. And not only in Russia, they are trying to intervene in the privacy of people. They have the same rhetoric, regardless of the country. They sincerely believe that an honest person has nothing to hide. This magical logic suggests the following: a normal person even wants to be followed by state spies. So that his private correspondence in the messengers was opened for them, so that the telephone calls could be recorded. After all, widespread openness and transparency in the style of "1984" will help to better identify extremists who will find it harder to escape. In fact, in such a society, anyone who tries to hide something may be suspected of extremism.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd wrote an article in The Telegraph , where she expressed her position on this issue. She said that normal, real people do not need encryption at all.

Amber Rudd recalled the terrible terrorist attacks of recent times. She said that these attacks - more precisely, the identity of their perpetrators - showed that extremists use Internet platforms to spread their ideology, to inspire fragile minds to carry out these terrible actions. As well as Internet services are used to plan terrorist attacks.

The minister said about the children - boys and girls - who in their bedrooms on their laptops are the victims of recruiters from Syria. It occurs in cities and across the country. Thanks to Internet platforms and services, right-wing groups drag their tentacles around the world without even leaving home: "The scale of what is happening cannot be underestimated."
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Describing the scale of the problem and causing sympathy, she proposed a solution to the problem: all Internet companies should help combat extremism. (It should be noted here that the Rudd article coincided in time with her visit to the first Global Internet Forum on Combating Terrorism, where her meeting with representatives of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and other technology companies was scheduled.)

And then the minister, who confuses hashing with hashtags , touched upon the topic of end-to-end encryption in instant messengers. It seems to be a sore subject for law enforcement in many countries. “Real people (real people) often prefer simplicity of use, rather than many features of excellent security that cannot be cracked. Who uses WhatsApp because of end-to-end encryption, and not because of the incredibly friendly interface and easy way to be in touch with friends and family? ”She asked.

This is not the first time that Amber Rudd is calling for the elimination of WhatsApp encryption. She also offered to impose fines on corporations like Google and Facebook, if they do not have time to remove illegal content within the prescribed period. She said a lot of things, but never before did she directly “hit” people who use encryption. Her phrase about “real people” caused real resentment among many security experts, privacy lawyers and human rights and technically advanced users who filled Twitter with messages that they were also “real people” and not some kind of ISIL supporters (forbidden in Russia), as it implies.

Magical thinking

The Register writes that this logic, which Amber Rudd demonstrates, in the technical industry is called “magic” or “magic” thinking:

Just wanting something to be true doesn't make this thing workable.

Amber Rudd believes that it is possible to embed a secret backdoor in Apple phones or transfer encryption keys to the state - and this will not harm the security of all people, but it will allow to catch terrorists. The reality is that it is impossible to get both.

But what happens if the state or special services get such power? Who will follow the tracker? Who can guarantee that they will not abuse our trust? And in fact there is plenty of evidence that in such cases, trust is necessarily abused. This is known from the documents of Edward Snowden. Once he talked about the internal audit in the NSA: several employees admitted that they were monitoring their former girls for their personal interests. He also saw “numerous incidents” in which NSA employees send each other nude photos that were accidentally intercepted during the daily routine of monitoring network traffic:

“Young men of 18-22 years old work in the ranks,” Snowden said. “Suddenly, they are sent to a position of extraordinary responsibility, where they have access to your private records.” During the working day they encounter something completely unrelated to their work in any sense. For example, intimate photos of a girl in a sexy pose. But the photos are extremely attractive. So what should they do? They turn around in a chair and show a colleague. He says: “Wow, that's cool. Send Bill a look. ” And then Bill sends to George, and George sends to Tom. And sooner or later, all these people met the girl’s secrets. This is never reported in reports. No one even knows about this, because the audit of those systems is very bad. The fact is that your private photos, private videos, intimate moments recordings are pulled out of the communication flow and transferred to the government without any special authorization and without special need, in violation of your rights. Why is it in the state database? ”

Snowden confirmed that he had seen this many times. Different employees encounter this more often, less often, depending on the task being performed. “This is considered an added benefit of working in the tracking department,” he said.

So where did the officials, deputies and other representatives of the authorities get this magical thinking? Is it a lack of technical education or some kind of professional deformation? Why don't they consult security experts and experts? These are probably rhetorical questions ...