In the news reports of terrorist attacks last week in London, it was discovered that Khalid Massod, who was responsible for the attack, used WhatsApp, just before implementing his plan. Unfortunately four people were killed in the attack. And in order to complete further investigation Amber Rudd, UK’s Home Secretary, is demanding Facebook Inc’s Whatsapp to handover its encryption services to the military. She demands online companies to be a bit aggressive in their approach to shut down terrorism.



WhatsApp introduced data encryption in 2016, which ensures that no one can read your messages apart from person or group you are sending it to. Encryption scrambles the data into a propriety code which can only be decoded using a special key. This key is given to the users by default. Apple Inc has been offering this encryption since last five years.

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Brazil government banned WhatsApp temporarily in the country in 2015, when the company refused government to go through the messages, exchanged between groups of drug dealers. However, these tech companies seem to have each other’s back. WhatsApp was seen taking sides with Apple. Helping its argument with FBI trying to invade into the unlocking of an iPhone, in case of a shooter involved in San Bernardio, California’s December massacre.

Rudd seeks help from these social media platforms like Google, Twitter, Facebook, including the smaller platforms like WordPress etc. She feels that they need to take proactive measures, as these encryptions are helping terrorist communicate, who are abusing their messaging services. U.K. government expects a little more support and understanding from these tech companies and avoid idealistic positions on data security and privacy.