UK: parliamentary committee asks the government to clarify its position on encryption

The UK Science and technology parliamentary committee has published its report on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill (known as ‘’Snooper’s charter’) – the bill through which the government is trying to expand intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ surveillance capabilities. In this report, the committee that the draft law is not clear on how it would affect end-to-end encrypted communications, and asks the government to ‘clarify and state clearly […] that it will not be seeking unencrypted content in such cases, in line with the way existing legislation is currently applied. In tightly prescribed circumstances, law enforcement and security services should be able to seek to obtain unencrypted data from communications service providers. They should only seek such information where it is clearly feasible, and reasonably practicable, and where its provision would be consistent with the right to privacy in UK and EU law’.