EXCLUSIVE: Home Office Quietly Drops ‘Silly’ Proposals to ban Encryption Devices

The Home Office has quietly dropped widely heralded plans to ban “sophisticated encryption devices” following a consultation which resulted in significant pushback from the business community and those in the cyber security industry. Encryption devices are phones or tablets built with, or have software uploaded, which ensures that messages sent or received by them cannot be decoded by anyone but the user. Although law enforcement agencies argue that criminals use encryption, there are also many legitimate reasons why business people, celebrities and even political figures might need to send and receive encrypted messages. In the spring of 2020 French law enforcement hacked into the EncroChat server and shared information with Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and police forces all over the UK, leading to the arrest of 2,800 people in the UK and the conviction of hundreds of drug smugglers and other criminals....