Signal Boss Says App Would Quit UK If Legislation Weakens Encryption

Signal’s president has said the encrypted messaging app would quit the UK if planned legislation weakens end-to-end encryption. 

Speaking to the BBC(Opens in a new window), Meredith Whittaker said Signal “would absolutely, 100% walk” from the UK if the app was required to “undermine the trust that people place [in Signal] to provide a truly private means of communication.” 

The legislation, called the Online Safety Bill(Opens in a new window), contains a provision allowing British communications watchdog Ofcom to demand social media and messaging platforms identify and take down child sexual abuse material via the use of certain technologies. 

As The Guardian notes(Opens in a new window), Whittaker criticized a proposal where images would be scanned for child sexual abuse material before they were encrypted. The practice, called client-side scanning, had been proposed by Apple but was paused in 2021(Opens in a new window) in response to concerns that it would compromise millions of iCloud users’ privacy.

Whittaker said the scanning proposal would turn phones into a “mass surveillance device that phones home to tech corporations and governments and private entities,” and added that “back doors” into encrypted services could potentially be hijacked by “malignant state actors” and be seized by criminals seeking access to the scanning systems.

End-to-end encrypted messages can only be read by the sender and receiver of those messages. This means that messaging apps such as Signal that employ encryption cannot read messages sent by users on their platforms.

Signal has over 100 million users around the world, and is popular with activists and journalists, with the latter relying on the app’s end-to-end encryption to securely receive tips and stories. 

Signal President Meredith Whittaker speaking at the 2022 Web Summit in Lisbon.
(Credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images)

It’s not the first time that messaging app heads have criticized the proposed British legislation. Last year, WhatsApp’s head told The Financial Times(Opens in a new window) that attempts to undermine or get rid of encryption in the UK could cause a domino effect across the world, and cause illiberal governments to do the same.

The UK Home Office said in a statement reported by the BBC that the “Online Safety Bill does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption but makes clear that technological changes should not be implemented in a way that diminishes public safety—especially the safety of children online.”

The Home Office added: “It is not a choice between privacy or child safety—we can and we must do both.”

Whittaker, however, told the BBC that the Online Safety Bill embodied a variant of “magical thinking” that believes online privacy can exist “but only for the good guys.”

She added: “Encryption is either protecting everyone or it is broken for everyone.”