UK government plans to force companies to break encryption: report

The UK government plans to force social media and internet companies to break encryption to help spies monitor communications, according to a leaked report.

Under an extension of the Investigatory Powers Act, the government could force companies to change their technology so that they could comply with warrants.

According to privacy advocates Open Rights Group said the secret document was shared with only a handful of communications companies. According to the organisation, it could mean encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp would need to limit encryption.

The measures, if passed into law, would require internet and mobile companies with over 10,000 customers to hand over customers' information within 24 hours of receiving an order from the security services. It dictated that the material needed to be "in an intelligible form", suggesting they needed to be decrypted.

Many technology and communications companies had introduced end-to-end encryption as a way to secure their customers' information, which meant that only the sender and receiver could see the contents of a WhatsApp message on their devices.

The draft regulations, which were under consultation, would also allow agencies listen to phone calls and read messages as they happened.

They represented an update to the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, commonly known as the Snooper's Charter, which gave the government broad powers to extend its surveillance capabilities.

It the regulations were to become law, tech companies could be required to hand over private communications, under warrant, within one working day, "in an intelligible form" without "electronic protection".

The Snooper's Charter gave government spies access to online browsing history and the companies could also be forced to "modify" their products in order to comply with government demands.

The fresh regulations were directed mostly at companies like WhatsApp to limit their encryption. WhatsApp had been recently been accused by home secretary Amber Rudd of providing a ''secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other''.