Every time an act of terrorism is committed, there is an outcry about encryption. This time, following the UK incident last week, is no different with some publications bringing WhatsApp into the picture.
The headlines in some media publications can only be described as crazy; for example, Melbourne's The Age had this: "82 seconds of hell that started with WhatsApp text." Would it have been different if it had been sent from Signal? Or Telegram? Or in plain text?
ZDNet ran a story about the hysterics indulged in by UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd who demanded that all encrypted messaging apps allow intelligence agencies access to content when they demanded.
There was no companion piece arguing that this demand was silly, something that should be apparent to any tech publication which claims to have any standing.
{loadposition sam08}Every time there is a chance to make a noise about encryption, governments, their agencies and their cheerleaders, all of whom have their noses in the same public trough, tend to bay at the moon.
Is there any proof that the London attacker Khalid Masood would have acted any differently if he had sent an unencrypted message before he started out on his killing spree?
No, both the publications mentioned have used WhatsApp in their headlines because it is used very widely and serves as click-bait.
If Masood had been wearing underwear from British icon Marks & Spencers, would The Age have headlined its story, "London attacker donned M&S briefs before commencing crime?" Doubtful.
But in the case of WhatsApp, The Age deemed it a crucial factor in the attack. Only one word can be used in response: rubbish.
The British government's reaction is not surprising; after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, there were numerous claims that the attackers had used steganography - the hiding of a message within a picture or music file by making numerous small changes to data - to communicate.
But this claim was blown away by the FBI themselves who held a press conference two weeks after the event to point out that the attackers had used ordinary, unencrypted email. More than two million images were analysed by the Centre for Information Technology Integration and no evidence was found of the use of steganography.
In short, the authorities will say and do anything that serves their purpose: to intrude more and more into the lives of largely peaceful people who are minding their own businesses.
A little more than a year after the beginning of the war in Iraq — which was driven by lies propagated by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi wrote a piece in which he said, "If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush press conference last year and shouted, 'B*****it!' it might have made a difference."
That same duty now devolves on journalists when governments and their lobbyists start propagating information that is patently false.
Encryption is now used by many average people who are conscious of their privacy – and they are entitled to do so. Governments would love to be able to peep into people's bedrooms, disguising their voyeuristic intentions as acts that will make people safer. The fact is, the more intrusive governments get, the less freedom people will have.
That some media outlets, which no doubt claim to still be part of the fourth state, choose to use an attack like the one in London to indulge in click-bait in order to feed traffic to their publications is a matter of shame.