whatsapp and other messenger might be banned by the United Kingdom government #whatsapp

whatsapp and other messenger might be banned by the United Kingdom government #whatsapp

by Malik korrich ~ mardi 14 juillet 2015

It was decades ago that George Orwell predicted in his novel 1984 that the governments will be involved in the surveillance of its own citizens and the same is now proposed by the UK government which mandates that all social media messenger service providers to switch off their end to end encryption services thereby allowing the government to access the details of the messages, communication and chat history and other details of the users.

If the service providers do not comply with this requirements, their services would be banned in the UK. The new law shall be a part of the Investigatory Powers Bill which is termed as the Snooper’s Charter and it was mentioned by the Queen in her Speech in the current year. The bill, if passed will empower the government to bar the services of the instant messenger applications which do not comply with this guideline of the government.

Messengers like the Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat and iMessage will come under the purview of the new law which is already in the parliament and which might be applicable later this year. According to the British Prime Minister David Cameron, such a law is essential to ensure the safety of the citizens of the UK. He stated this in the context of the attack on the French Newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The major intent behind this law is to make it mandatory for the service providers of these messengers to record all the messages and activities that take place on their network. The growing threat of terrorism is the reason cited for such laws world over; however such laws only infringe with the personal lives of the citizens in their respective countries thereby imposing a surveillance system on them that will infringe into their privacy.