Amber Rudd must realise a back door in encryption won’t make us more secure – it’ll help criminals Hashing or hashtags? The first is used in end-to-end encryption to encode messages in such a way that that not […]

Hashing or hashtags? The first is used in end-to-end encryption to encode messages in such a way that that not only are they difficult to decipher, you can tell if they have been messed with.

The second is used, among other things, to identify themes in social media through keywords.

There are only a few letters in it and it’s hardly fair to condemn someone for confusing the two, is it?

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After all, techies might easily mix up their Austen (Jane) and their Auster (Paul) and the world doesn’t come to an end.

MPs shouldn’t be teased

Besides, many people are uncomfortable with tech. So if we lay into MPs for getting it wrong we’re hardly going to encourage them to raise key issues.

As an MP with a tech background I don’t want my colleagues to stay quiet on the technology increasingly dominating our lives because they’ll be humiliated if they get a few letters wrong.

As one tweet put it: “Surprising amount of ppl calling other ppl stupid for not understanding encryption & tech. Remember empathy. Be human. Persuade people”. Agreed.

Amber Rudd a different case

But.

This was the Home Secretary. With a department of 27,000 civil servants. It just takes one to understand hashing and another to put it in a digestible briefing.

I am referring, of course, to Amber Rudd’s claim that we need people who “understand the necessary hashtags” – not hashing – to allow officials to access the private correspondence of those suspected of terrorist activity.

Our response matters

This is following a major terrorist attack where people died and our democracy was, for a few hours, under siege. As a country, and as a Government, our response matters.

The Home Secretary has form in this area. As Energy Secretary, Rudd seemed content to require Smart Meters to be installed in all our homes with little understanding of who was responsible for all the data they generated.

A crucial time

Rudd mixed up hashing and hashtags at a time which is critical for the future of the internet. I recently wrote that I hope 2017 will be the year we realise we’re doing the web wrong – centralising, rather than distributing, power.

Tim Berners Lee, who invented the web, recently wrote that there are three things we need to change to save the web: data privacy, advertising and fake news.

It’s a key moment in the battle for the future of the web, a battle that is being fought on many fronts. Two are particularly relevant ones for the encryption debate.

Tech giants and MPs

The first is the tech giants. After two decades where internet companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to every staging post on the road to taking some responsibility for their impact on our lives, there appears to be growing consensus that they must do more to reflect and protect citizens rights.

The second is Parliament and our laws. Technology left parts of our legislative framework in areas like security, data and privacy at best out of touch and at worse obsolete.

We have the opportunity to rebuild the right balance between the rights of the individual and the protection of the many.

Not up to task

But we can’t do that if the Government, whose duty it is to protect us, patently has no idea what it is asking for.

Was the Homes Secretary demanding the security services have access to all Whatsapp encrypted messaging?

If so, then tech companies are going to accuse the Government of trying to break the internet. And they will have a point.

Handing criminals a virtual brick

Putting a back door into end-to-end encryption is like making all of us live in glass houses in order to observe the very, very few of us planning atrocities.

We will not be more secure, we will be more vulnerable to every passing criminal with a virtual brick.

I believe that Governments can do great things with technology. We have seen some of that with Government Digital Services and GCHQ. But I would not trust them to hold all the keys to all the world’s encryption.

If, on the other hand, what the Home Secretary is asking for is access to specific Whatsapp messages on the phone of a dead terrorist – who destroyed his right to privacy together with the lives of those on the bridge and the policeman at our gates – then that is a challenge the tech world may be able to rise to.

I am the first to condemn tech giants for ignoring their responsibilities to citizens and our security. But we have to make responsible demands of them.

2017 should be the year when we expect our Home Secretaries to be as familiar with the distinction between hashing and hashtags as between visas and visitors.