The UK's prime minister, David Cameron, has re-iterated that the UK government does not intend to "leave a safe space—a new means of communication—for terrorists to communicate with each other." This confirms remarks he made earlier this year about encryption, when he said: "The question is are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read. My answer to that question is: no, we must not."

David Cameron was replying in the House of Commons on Monday to a question from the Conservative MP David Bellingham, who asked him whether he agreed that the "time has come for companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter to accept and understand that their current privacy policies are completely unsustainable?" To which Cameron replied: "we must look at all the new media being produced and ensure that, in every case, we are able, in extremis and on the signature of a warrant, to get to the bottom of what is going on."

Although Cameron's intentions may be clear, how he intends to implement them is not. Speaking on Monday, Cameron said: "We are urging social media companies to work with us and help us deal with terrorism." Is this just a matter of putting pressure on Google and Facebook to hand over user information more readily, or does he expect them to proactively police what is posted on their services?

And what does he intend to do about encrypted communications where companies can't hand over keys, or where there is no company involved, as with GnuPG, the open source implementation of the OpenPGP encryption system?

Since the UK government has said that re-introducing the "Snooper's Charter" is one of its priorities, details should soon emerge. On Monday, Cameron said the issue of "safe spaces" will "come in front of the House," presumably meaning the new Bill. Given Cameron's latest comments, there seems little hope the proposed legislation will be proportionate: even though he claimed "Britain is not a state that is trying to search through everybody’s emails and invade their privacy," he nonetheless evidently wants the capability to snoop on everything UK citizens are up to online. The key issue is now whether the proposals will be realistic about what can and can't be done when dealing with modern encrypted communications.