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WhatsApp would rather be banned in Britain than weaken its security as part of the UK Government’s flagship new internet legislation, the messaging platform’s boss has warned.
Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, said it would refuse to comply with the Online Safety Bill if it attempted to outlaw “end-to-end” encryption.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with UK legislators to discuss the proposed law, he described the Bill as the most concerning piece of legislation currently being discussed in the western world.
“End-to-end” encryption secures messages by scrambling them and ensuring that only those sending and receiving them can read them.
WhatsApp cannot see messages sent via its own service, and so cannot comply with law enforcement requests to either hand them over for anti-terror purposes or to identify and remove child-abuse material, for example.
The UK Government insists that it is possible to have both privacy and child safety.
But Cathcart said that undermining the privacy of WhatsApp messages in the UK would do so for all its users worldwide.
“It’s a remarkable thing to think about. There isn’t a way to change it in just one part of the world,” he said.
“Some countries have chosen to block it: that’s the reality of shipping a secure product. We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that.”
Cathcart added, “The reality is, our users all around the world want security.
“Ninety-eight percent 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 per cent of users.”
The Online Safety Bill has been working its way through Parliament since being published in draft form in May 2021.
It is designed to help clamp down on online trolling and illegal forms of pornography by placing more responsibility on the platforms that internet users use.
As part of this, it allows the UK Government or regulator Ofcom to require companies to scan the contents of messages sent through their platforms for illegal content.
However, doing so would likely force them to weaken or do away with their own security measures.
The Government insisted that the bill “does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption” and that “we can and must have both” privacy and child safety.
But it also does not explicitly state how it would be possible to monitor message content and continue their encryption, creating a “grey area”.
The Investigatory Powers Bill, which passed in 2016, already gives authorities the power to demand that apps begin scanning messages for illegal material, but they have yet to do so with WhatsApp.
Cathcart was openly critical of the Online Safety Bill in September, saying that it was “puzzling” governments wanted to weaken security, not bolster it.
Cathcart said, “It could make clear that privacy and security should be considered in the framework.
“It could explicitly say that end-to-end encryption should not be taken away.
“There can be more procedural safeguards so that this can’t just happen independently as a decision.”
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