Prviacy Vs. Security: Poll Finds Most People Would Sacrifice Privacy To Stop Terrorist Attacks

A recent poll by Cable.co.uk found two-third of all adults in the United Kingdom are willing to sacrifice their personal privacy in exchange for security.

In addition, a majority of British citizens also indicated they would feel safer if messaging apps like WhatsApp were unencrypted and the contents of the messages were available to law enforcement during investigations.

Read: UK Officials Call For Encryption Backdoor After Westminster Attack

The poll found 66 percent of people in the U.K. said intercepting communication between terrorists was more valuable to them than privacy, and 51 percent opposed encrypted communication apps. Just 25 percent of those questioned worried their private information would be more easily accessible by hackers and other criminals if they were to surrender some privacy.

By contrast, just 18 percent of the 2,000 adults surveyed believe privacy of the general public is more valuable than law enforcement having the ability to intercept communications and potentially foil attackers.

Younger people were more interested in protecting personal privacy than the overall population, with 26 percent of 25-34 year olds favoring privacy over government agency access to information. Just one in 10 of people over 55 years old viewed digital privacy more favorably.

A poll conducted by Pew Research in 2015 found Americans were similarly worried that personal privacy was getting in the way of safety, with 56 percent of those polled expressing concern the U.S. government’s anti-terror policies have not gone far enough to protect the country, compared to just 28 percent who believed law enforcement policies had gone too far in restricting individual privacy.

Read: Top 5 Free Encryption Messaging Apps To Keep Your Conversations Secure

The poll from Cable.co.uk came just days after a terrorist attack was carried out in Westminster, England that killed three and injured more than 50 people.

In the wake of the attack, Home secretary Amber Rudd took aim at WhatsApp after it was discovered the attacker possessed a smartphone and was apparently communicating with others through the encrypted messaging service.

Rudd called for platforms like WhatsApp to cooperate in investigations in cases like the Westminster attack, and suggested encrypted communications allow terrorists to hide their conversations from law enforcement.

It’s not the first time a government organizations have sought a backdoor through encrypted services.

Former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron suggested blocking encrypted messaging services unless they provided a government backdoor following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015, and U.S. officials have tried to push companies to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted messages, including an attempt to pressure Apple to break its own encryption protocol after the San Bernardino shooting in late 2015.

Despite government attempts to squash encryption in order to gain access to communications under the guise of security, and despite the public’s apparent willingness to acquiesce to those requests, there is little evidence to suggest encryption makes society less safe—and on a day-to-day basis, likely makes the average person safer.

In a blog post for the Center for Democracy and Technology, CEO Nuala O’Connor said that “personal data has become a valuable currency on the black market” and encrypting that sought-after information protects millions of people from criminal attacks.

While having a backdoor to encryption might make life easier for law enforcement, O’Connor notes there are still plenty of legal pathways for agencies to access information when needed, and requiring a warrant for that information isn’t too burdensome.

Demands for backdoors into encryption also display a lack of understanding as to how encrypted messaging services work. Communication via end-to-end encrypted apps require an encryption key to decode messages. Without the key, the messages appear as a mashup of undecipherable characters.

For companies like WhatsApp to include a backdoor or any sort of access to its communications that doesn’t require the encryption key would put at risk the protection as a whole; if encryption is cracked for one instance, the protection is no longer valid.

“I can’t build an access technology that only works with proper legal authorization, or only for people with a particular citizenship or the proper morality. The technology just doesn’t work that way. If a backdoor exists, then anyone can exploit it,” Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and Electronic Frontier Foundation board member, wrote of encryption.