LAST Sunday, UK prime minister David Cameron marched through Paris, arm-in-arm with other world leaders, in a show of support for free speech following the bloody attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The next day, Cameron said he wanted to curtail free speech.
He didn't put it exactly like that. In a speech detailing plans for new surveillance powers, he said he would ban communication methods that cannot be read by the security services (see "Focus on surveillance as US military's tweets hacked"). "Do we allow safe spaces for [terrorists] to talk to each other? I say no we don't," he declared.
This stance ultimately requires either a blanket ban on encrypted messages, and/or "back doors" built into the platforms used to send them, such as the wildly popular WhatsApp. Neither is practical; perhaps just as well, because neither is a good idea even in principle. The first would destroy any hope of preserving online privacy, whether for lovers, dissidents or shoppers. The second would be a gift to hackers as well as spooks – whose tactics to date have hardly inspired trust.
In short, outlawing safe spaces for terrorists means outlawing them for the rest of us, too: that is how online freedom works. And restricting freedom of speech is no way to defend it.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Free speech for all"
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