LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Tech firms said they would develop ways to "identify and remove terrorist propaganda" but failed to mention any movement on how to deal with encrypted messages, after a meeting with UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Rudd met executives from Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook. She has been publicly critical of their use of encryption on message applications which puts the content out of police reach.

The Metropolitan Police said that Khalid Masood, who mowed down three people in a car on Westminster Bridge last week and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead himself, had sent a message via WhatsApp before he started his attack.

WhatsApp messages are encrypted at origin and destination and can only be accessed via the users' phones.

In a statement after the meeting on Rudd called the talks "useful" but demanded the industry worked harder and faster to stop extremist material even going online.

There was no mention by either side of access to encrypted messages as flagged by the minister earlier this week. There was also no indication of when any measures would be implemented.

"My starting point is pretty straightforward. I don't think that people who want to do us harm should be able to use the internet or social media to do so. I want to make sure we are doing everything we can to stop this," Rudd said.

"We focused on the issue of access to terrorist propaganda online and the very real and evolving threat it poses. I said I wanted to see this tackled head-on and I welcome the commitment from the key players to set up a cross-industry forum that will help to do this."

"In taking forward this work I'd like to see the industry to go further and faster in not only removing online terrorist content but stopping it going up in the first place."



Rudd has been accused of not grasping the subject fully, with industry observers claiming that any attempt to introduce a "backdoor" to applications increased access to vulnerabilities from hackers on crucial private data such as online bank details.

One industry expert, who declined to be named, told Digital Look that Rudd's suggestion was a recipe for more criminal activity, not less.

"Hackers and other attackers look for any weakness they can find, and a back door is a significant weakness that can and will be exploited for ill-gotten gain," he said.

"The last thing the home secretary should want to deal with is the private details of millions of Britons being circulated among criminals around the world, and yet bizarrely she is setting herself up for that precise situation. An successful attack on a back door is a case of when, not if."

Rudd said on Sunday that there should be "no place for terrorists to hide."

"We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp - and there are plenty of others like that - don't provide a secret

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