If anyone thought 2015 was going to be a better year than 2014, the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere in France have surely put paid to that misplaced optimism.
World leaders gathered together in Paris in an impressive show of solidarity … then shortly afterwards started concocting new ways to impinge on our freedoms.
Cameron’s latest wheeze is to attempt to restrict the use of encrypted communications. “In our country,” he said, “do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?”
Erm… yes? Cameron wants services such as iMessage and WhatsApp to give up their messages to the security services, but there’s a bigger picture here. Encryption, and the privacy it provides, underpins commerce on the internet. Put your credit card details into Amazon, or do some online banking, and your personal details are encrypted using an algorithm which is very difficult to break. Even social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter default to HTTPS connections these days.
As James Ball points out in the Guardian, weakening that encryption risks damaging the digital economy. If the spooks can listen in, potentially anyone can.
It’s frankly terrifying that someone tasked with keeping the country safe is that ignorant of the way the internet works.