David Goddard | Getty Images News | Getty Images <\/p>\n
LONDON Lawmakers from countries within the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance have warned tech firms that unbreakable encryption technology \"creates severe risks to public safety.\"<\/p>\n
Ministers from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand published a statement Sunday calling on the tech industry to develop a solution that enabled law enforcement to access tightly encrypted messages.<\/p>\n
\"We urge industry to address our serious concerns where encryption is applied in a way that wholly precludes any legal access to content,\" the statement, which was signed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr and U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel, said.<\/p>\n
The statement, published on the website of the U.S. Department of Justice, was also signed by India and Japan, which are not part of the Five Eyes alliance.<\/p>\n
Technology companies like Apple and Facebook encrypt user's communications \"end-to-end,\" meaning that only users can access their own messages. It applies to written messages, as well as audio and video communications.<\/p>\n
While citizens benefit from additional privacy, law enforcement agencies see end-to-end encryption as a barrier to their investigations and have been calling on tech companies to introduce backdoors that would give law enforcement agencies access.<\/p>\n
\"We call on technology companies to work with governments on reasonable, technically feasible solutions,\" the governments said.<\/p>\n
They added that end-to-end encryption poses a \"significant challenges to public safety, including to highly vulnerable members of our societies like sexually exploited children.\"<\/p>\n
Although the nations did concede that some forms of encryption \"play a crucial role in protecting personal data, privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and cyber security.\"<\/p>\n
Ultimately, they said they wanted to develop a solution with the tech firms that enabled users to continue communicating privately and securely, but also allow law enforcement and tech firms to monitor criminal activity.<\/p>\n
Last year, a group of companies including Apple, Microsoft and WhatsApp opposed a proposal by British spy agency GCHQ that would enable spooks to access people's encrypted messages.<\/p>\n
Under the proposal, GCHQ suggested adding \"ghost\" recipients to suspicious message threads that the sender and the receiver would be oblivious to.<\/p>\n
In an open letter published last May, tech firms and privacy groups said such a feature would \"threaten fundamental human rights.\"<\/p>\n
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