Home secretary Amber Rudd appears to be a WhatsApp user and was active on the service as recently as Monday morning, 24 hours after calling for the level of encryption on the messaging service to be watered down.



Rudd used a television interview on Sunday to accuse WhatsApp of providing a "secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other", and demanded the Facebook-owned business makes it easier for the security services to spy on conversations in the aftermath of the Westminster terrorist attack.

But a mobile phone number used by the home secretary was active on the service at 8.57am on Monday.

The Home Office did not initially confirm whether Rudd is still using the phone number, which BuzzFeed News used to communicate with her last summer, but her picture accompanies the profile and the account appeared to be active.

A spokesperson later said: "The home secretary was clear that there should be no safe space for terrorists to communicate online. To suggest she was talking about the use of communication services more generally misses the point.

“The government supports encryption in cyber security. But it is irresponsible to give terrorists a way to plot online which cannot be intercepted by the police and intelligence agencies who are trying to protect the public from further attacks.”

Rudd appears to be one of dozens of ministers and senior politicians identified by BuzzFeed News as using WhatsApp. Many key figures in Downing Street are active on the service, while different factions of Conservative and Labour MPs use it to coordinate their messaging and agree lines to take.



Any decision to water down encryption could make it easier for these messages to be intercepted, not just by Britain's security services but also by foreign intelligence agencies and criminal hackers.

Theresa May's spokesperson backed the home secretary and said the government would put pressure on internet companies at talks on Thursday: "Where there are instances where law enforcement agencies wish to gain access to messages which are important to their investigations, they should be able to."

“What she’s saying is that there are circumstances where law enforcement agencies need to be able to access content then they should be able to do so. How that’s achieved is a matter for the talks.”