The UK government has said that it recognises the "essential role that strong encryption plays in enabling the protection of sensitive personal data and securing online communications and transactions," and does not "advocate or require the provision of a back-door key or support arbitrarily weakening the security of internet applications and services." However, speaking in the House of Lords, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Baroness Shields, went on to say: "This is not about creating back doors; this is about companies being able to access communications on their network when presented with a warrant."

Shields singled out "an alarming movement towards end-to-end encrypted application" for criticism. She said that David Cameron "expressed concern that many companies are building end-to-end encrypted applications and services and not retaining the keys. The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that there cannot be a safe place for terrorists, criminals and paedophiles to operate freely, with impunity and beyond the reach of law." For this reason, she claimed, "It is absolutely essential that these companies which understand and build those stacks of technology are able to decrypt that information and provide it to law enforcement in extremis."

Edward Snowden, who is currently experiencing joie de twittre, was quick to mock the contradictory statements. Commenting on the UK government's latest position, he wrote: "Translation for UK journalists: 'Of course we want backdoors, but only for everything people actually use.' " He pointed out that the issue of warrants was immaterial: "A backdoor that requires a warrant is still a backdoor." Moreover, he underlined a crucial issue the UK government seems to be ignoring: "A company cannot provide special access to a one government without losing access to the markets of all others. Work for one, work for all."

Ahead of the publication of the draft Investigatory Powers bill—the "Snooper's Charter"—which is expected to be unveiled next week, the UK's intelligence agencies have been ramping up their PR efforts—literally, in the case of GCHQ, which has a "new and expanding PR team" according to The Guardian.

Last night, the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, gave a lecture entitled "A Modern MI5" at a lord mayor’s event in the City of London, in which he claimed "the threat we are facing today is on a scale and at a tempo that I have not seen before in my career." He also spoke about what he claimed were "ill-informed accusations of ‘mass surveillance’," despite what Snowden revealed about GCHQ's Tempora programme, which essentially downloads and analyses all Internet traffic flowing through the UK, and about the Karma Police project, which sought to track the Web visits of every visible user on the Internet. Parker must be using a top-secret definition of 'mass surveillance' that we don't know about.