Two senior officials of the secret service GCHQ of the United Kingdom detailed how they believe the authorities could gain access to end-to-end encrypted communications.
The study was written by the technical director of the National Cyber Security Centre (National Cyber Security Centre) Ian Levy and the Technical Director of Cryptanalysis at GCHQ Crispin Robinson and claims that any end-to-end encryption can be perfectly functional, but law enforcement authorities would have access.
“It is relatively easy for a service provider to silently add a participant to a group chat or call”, the authors say.
“The service provider usually controls the identity system and thus decides who is who and which devices will have access to participate in a conversation or a call”.
The authors of the study state that such a solution is no more intrusive than the telephone surveillance used in the past century and that their solution will not “weaken end-to-end encryption.”
Their idea developed in Lawfare did not please Edward Snowden at all, who called it "absolute madness" on Twitter.
“Η βρετανική κυβέρνηση θέλει τις εταιρείες να δηλητηριάζουν τις ιδιωτικές συνομιλίες των πελατών τους προσθέτοντας κρυφά την κυβέρνηση σαν τρίτο μέρος, που σημαίνει ότι οποιοσδήποτε στον κατάλογο των φίλων σας θα μπορούσε να είναι κατάσκοπος”, αναφέρει η Edward Snowden.
“Δεν θα μπορούσε να υπάρξει εμπιστοσύνη με την διαμεσολάβηση της εταιρείας.”
Absolute madness: the British government wants companies to poison their customers’ private conversations by secretly adding the government as a third party, meaning anyone on your friend list would become “your friend plus a spy.” No company-mediated identity could be trusted.
GCHQ revealed how it selects the security vulnerabilities it informs technology companies of, and added that it does not inform specific companies of all the vulnerabilities it discovers.
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