Officials want to force backdoors onto ALL smart gadgets

The UK government isn’t the only authority putting a knife to the neck of encryption.

In fact, the UK is just one country in an ever-lengthening list of other governments hell-bent on destabilising online security.

Revelations, which surfaced this week, shone a light on how, back in July, US intelligence officials told the Senate Intelligence Committee there’s no need for them to approach courts before requesting data from a tech company. If the company refuses, the investigators can obtain a Foreign Intelligence Court order instead.

Now, Germany’s Interior Secretary, Thomas de Maiziere, is going a step further on the anti-encryption crusade as he pushes for backdoors that aren’t just limited to smartphones. 

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The RedaktionsNetzweirk Deutschland (RND) reports that de Maizère has written up a draft proposal titled: ‘The legal duty for third parties to allow for secret surveillance’, due to be presented at the Interior Minister Conference taking place next week in Leipzig. You can already guess what the bill is going to be about and it is as sinister as it sounds. 

 According to the RND, the proposal will massively extend the powers for the government to spy on its citizens. In the proposal, de Maizère highlights how modern locking systems on cars are now so clever that they’re able to alert the car’s owner if it’s shaken even slightly.

The new law will ensure that, if the police deem it justifiable, the alert would not be sent out at all. This goes way beyond any proposals that force tech companies to build backdoors into their apps and encrypted devices. 

As well as cars, de Maizère wants security services to be given access to spy on any devices which can connect to the internet. This means your phones, your tablets, computers, all of your smart home speakers, TVs and even smart toys would be impacted. While the report states the security services will require court authorisation to spy through internet-connected devices, the eventual backdoors built into all these devices will weaken the current security that we take for granted. 

With Amber Rudd most notoriously boasting about her inability to understand how encryption works. As well as her claim that real people aren’t interested in encryption, we are only getting more and more concerned about the stance governments around the world are taking on encryption.