Five Eyes governments as well as India and Japan make a new call for backdoors into products that are end-to-end encrypted
A number of experts have pointed to the information … Manik Berry / Fossbytes : Five Eyes, India, And Japan Want ‘Backdoor’ To End-To-End Encryption Phil Muncaster / infosecurity-magazine.com : Five Eyes Repeat Encryption Backdoor Calls Aditi Agrawal / MediaNama : ‘We want backdoors to E2E encrypted platforms for law enforcement’: India, Japan, Five Eyes to companies Scott Bicheno / Telecoms.com : US, UK and allies renew call for state backdoors into encrypted digital products Alex Scroxton / ComputerWeekly.com : Five Eyes spy group again demands access to private messages Colm Gorey / Silicon Republic : Five Eyes, India and Japan call for backdoors in end-to-end encryption EURACTIV.com : ‘Five Eyes’ alliance demands ways to access encrypted apps Agence France-Presse : ‘Five Eyes’ alliance, India and Japan demand ways to access encrypted apps Charles Hymas / Telegraph : UK leads global call for Facebook to take action on paedophiles Barry Collins / Forbes : Mission Impossible: 7 Countries Tell Facebook To Break Encryption Tweets: Justice Department / @thejusticedept : International Statement: End-To-End Encryption and Public Safety https://www.justice.gov/... @ukhomeoffice : The 🇬🇧 and six key allies 🇦🇺 🇨🇦 🇮🇳 🇯🇵 🇳🇿 🇺🇸 have today called on tech companies to ensure their end-to-end encryption policies don't make the internet less safe for everyone. #EndToEndEncryption https://www.gov.uk/... https://twitter.com/... Lukasz Olejnik / @lukolejnik : Official statement of the U.S. Government concemning strong end-to-end encryption and calling on trchnology providers to consult their design with governments. Strong technology sovereignty flavor. But whose sovereignty? They say that consensus is reached. https://www.justice.gov/... https://twitter.com/... Martijn Grooten / @martijn_grooten : Whether you have five or seven eyes, encryption backdoors are a really bad idea https://www.zdnet.com/... Amie Stepanovich / @astepanovich : This is stupid, dangerous, and short sighted policy. Undermining cybersecurity in this way will reverberate for decades if not centuries. https://twitter.com/... Bob McElrath / @bobmcelrath : Remember Watergate? Do you really think the political landscape is less contentious now than it was in 1972, and that no political candidate could ever abuse these proposed powers? https://twitter.com/... Martin Sfp Bryant / @martinsfp : Another call for encryption backdoors. Why don't spies ask for a mic to be installed in everyone's home that they can switch on to investigate you? If you accept the digital realm to be equal to the physical realm, that's the equivalent of what they want https://www.zdnet.com/... Cristin Goodwin / @cristingoodwin : We need to really think hard about this. It's not a “Sunday night quick read”. This pulls on the intersection of privacy, security, and law enforcement and merits serious national debate. https://twitter.com/... Nat Torkington / @gnat : You'd think that politicians who use WhatsApp and Signal as much as they do would know better than to endorse weakened encryption. Do they really want terrorists, media, other nations, or even the Opposition to know what they say to each other? https://www.beehive.govt.nz/ ... @nca_uk : Facebook reports child sexual abuse content on its Messenger service. But it plans to introduce end-to-end encryption so it'll lose sight of crimes committed online. https://twitter.com/... @jaredctate : The US DOJ & Governments around the world just called for an END to End to End Encryption. You cannot ensure data privacy by mandating backdoors. This is never going to work. Decentralized #blockchain cryptography is now more important than ever! https://www.justice.gov/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : Here is the DOJ saying it supports end-to-end encryption only if it's not actually end-to-end encryption. https://twitter.com/... Aaron Ross Powell / @arossp : As a citizen, it is not your job to make yourself legible to the state. Privacy is a right, and so is using tech that protects your privacy. If that makes things more difficult for the government, so be it. https://twitter.com/... Donald Clark / @donaldsclark : OMG Five Eyes + Japan/india just put out a statement calling for ability to backdoor / access encrypted content (whilst still bring really supportive of e2e encryption... 😏). How do you selectivity apply mathematics? https://www.beehive.govt.nz/ ... Matt Odell / @matt_odell : Encryption bans will not prevent criminals or our enemies from using it. They will go out of their way to use encryption if necessary. An encryption ban will simply hurt law abiding honest citizens and make us incredibly vulnerable to malicious actors. https://twitter.com/... Kurt Opsahl / @kurtopsahl : The DOJ/FiveEyes+ statement on e2e crypto rightly opposes “counter-productive and dangerous approaches that would materially weaken or limit security systems.” And then demands one, on the very same page. https://www.justice.gov/... https://twitter.com/... Meltem Demirors / @melt_dem : i have no words using “sexually exploited children” as the burning platform to attempt to extend the boundaries of lawful intercept and prevent consumers from using E2E technology is brazen, even for these ghouls https://www.justice.gov/... @alexlindsay : “However, pressure has been mounting in recent years as western governments seek to reach intelligence-gathering parity with China.” Not sure that should be the goal for western governments. https://www.zdnet.com/... @bitcoin_woods : Translation: We want backdoors in all software, because we dont want people to have privacy & freedom. Opt-out Fight back. https://twitter.com/... Lei-yen / @majin_lei : They want backdoors into our lives. That means police can access the most private convos, pictures, etc. please vote and please pay attention. DO NOT LET LAW ENFORCEMENT HAVE FULL ACCESS TO YOUR LIFE https://twitter.com/... Shawn Yeager / @shawnyeager : You lost this battle in the 90s. You'll lose again. To secure your right to secure, private communications, support @EFF, @fightfortheftr, and if you can, find open source projects and sponsor their developers. https://github.com/... https://twitter.com/... Avi / @avifelman : Privacy coins loving this today. Justice Dept dropped a nice halving gift for ZEC. https://twitter.com/... Danny Diekroeger / @dannydiekroeger : An attack on encryption is an attack on freedom. Luckily you can't ban math. https://twitter.com/... Steve Herman / @w7voa : US joins six other countries in arguing that end-to-end encryption precluding “lawful access to the content of communications in any circumstances” creates “severe risks to public safety.” https://twitter.com/... Max Keiser / @maxkeiser : We know that govts can't secure data Govts have a terrible track record securing data Govt bad actors abuse data Giving govt's authoritarian control over our data is an act of individual political suicide https://twitter.com/... @privacyfocused : Tone is different, message is the same. They need to understand that when trust is broken (ie. secret courts, unauthorized access, gag orders in requests for data, NSA taps), there are consequences...and leave the children out of this, #BeggingTheQuestion https://www.justice.gov/... Jameson Lopp / @lopp : DOJ composes softer conciliatory-sounding language for what is effectively a new spin on asking for back doors into secure systems, thus making them insecure. https://twitter.com/... @kennyog : A bit underhand putting this out on the Sunday after the Eurocrypt deadline when all the cryptographers are asleep (ht @VTeagueAus). https://www.gov.uk/... Leanne / @mslods : Australia's Minister for Home Affairs is one of the signatories to this International Statement on end-to-end encryption and public safety: https://www.gov.uk/... Matthew Green / @matthew_d_green : In most ways except one, the encryption debate is the same as it ever was. So what's changed?The current administration has demonstrated that app store bans can be used as a hammer to implement policy, and you can bet these folks are paying attention. https://www.gov.uk/... Marco / @nekotwit : What the fuck is that shit ? “Tech companies should include mechanisms in the design of their encrypted products and services whereby governments, acting with appropriate legal authority, can gain access to data in a readable and usable format” That means a fucking BACKDOOR. https://twitter.com/... Rand Hindi / @randhindi : Here we go again.. this is one of the reason we need to make cryptography open source. If governments want to kill privacy in proprietary apps, lets make sure everyone can build their own open, decentralized alternative! https://asia.nikkei.com/... #privacy Zack Whittaker / @zackwhittaker : What's interesting this time around is that India and Japan also signed onto the letter, suggesting efforts by governments to undermine encryption is widening. (Japan and India are both close international partners of the Five Eyes.) https://www.gov.uk/... Dhanaraj Thakur / @thakurdhanaraj : a really bad idea: “Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime” - via @NikkeiAsia #encryption https://asia.nikkei.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This statement extends a pressure campaign that began with the [[a:946510|2019 open letter from the US Attorney General and UK and Australian officials urging Facebook to abandon its end-to-end encryption plans]], widening the coalition from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance to include India and Japan. The demand is the same — lawful-access mechanisms built into encrypted products — but the signatory list now spans seven governments across three continents.
Industry resistance is well established: Apple's refusal during the San Bernardino iPhone standoff, which it framed as a 'dangerous precedent', set the template for vendors rejecting court-ordered backdoors, while Ray Ozzie's proposed device-escrow architecture was an earlier attempt at a technical compromise that never gained traction.
First-order effects
- Companies deploying default end-to-end encryption — most prominently Facebook across its messaging apps, the explicit target of the 2019 letter — now face coordinated demands from seven governments rather than three, raising the diplomatic and regulatory cost of refusing.
- India and Japan joining the call signals that encryption access is no longer just an Anglosphere intelligence-community position, meaning regional regulators in major Asian markets may translate the statement into local legal pressure on the same platforms.
Second-order effects
- Governments are shifting from advisory letters to paid persuasion: the UK subsequently hired M&C Saatchi to run a publicity campaign against Meta's plan to make Messenger end-to-end encrypted by default ([[a:974984]]), showing the escalation path this statement sits on.
- Platforms under pressure will point to client-side alternatives as proof that safety and encryption can coexist — WhatsApp's methods for detecting abusive content within an encrypted service ([[a:966369]]) become the counter-proposal offered to regulators instead of backdoors.
Third-order effects
- With voluntary appeals repeatedly rebuffed since the 2016 Apple case, the pattern points toward governments moving from statements to legislation mandating lawful-access mechanisms — turning what vendors frame as a security decision into a regulated one.
- If the coalition keeps expanding beyond Five Eyes, encryption policy consolidates as a bloc-level bargaining issue, with platform companies negotiating access frameworks jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than holding a single global design line.
The trend: State demands for access to end-to-end encrypted products are escalating from joint letters toward public campaigns and prospective legislation, with each new signatory country narrowing the space for a uniform no-backdoor stance by platform vendors.