Two senior officials at the UK's GCHQ secret service have detailed how they believe the authorities could have access in end-to-end encrypted communications.
The study was written by the technical director of the National Cyber Security Center (National Cybersecurity Centre) Ian Levy and GCHQ's Technical Director of Cryptanalysis Crispin Robinson and claims that any end-to-end encryption can be perfectly functional but still be accessed by law enforcement.
“It is relatively easy for a service provider to silently add a participant to a group chat or call”, the authors report.
"The service provider usually controls the identity system and thus decides who is who and which machines will have access to participate in a conversation or some call”.
The study's authors say such a solution is no more annoying than the telephone surveillance used in the last century, and that their solution would not "weaken end-to-end encryption."
Their idea that developed in Lawfare did not like Edward Snowden at all who called it "absolute madness" on Twitter.
"The British government wants companies to poison their customers' private conversations by secretly adding the government as a third party, which means that anyone on your friends list could be a spy," said Edward Snowden.
"There could be no trust through the mediation of the company."
Absolute madness: the British government wants companies to poison their customers' private conversations by secretly adding the government as a third party, meaning anyone on your friend list would become "your friend plus a spy." No company-mediated identity could be trusted.
The GCHQ he revealed also how he chooses security flaws that inform technology companies and added that he does not notify these companies about all the vulnerabilities he discovers.
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