Theresa May London Terrorist Attack Response: Mosque Incident Justifies Internet Crackdown

British Prime Minister Theresa May responded Monday to the attack on a mosque in the Finsbury Park section of London by doubling down on the need to place stricter regulations on the internet to crack down on extremist content.

"This government will act to stamp out extremist and hateful ideology, both across society and on the internet," May said after the attack, in which a van drove into a crowd of Muslim worshippers leaving a mosque. The attack left one person dead and 10 others injured.

Read: London Vehicle Attack Outside Finsbury Park Mosque Causes Multiple Casualties

The statement from May is just her latest attempt to regulate internet services in response to terrorist attacks. The prime minister, whose party lost seats in the most recent elections, has responded to several incidents in the United Kingdom by calling on internet companies to cooperate more fully with law enforcement.

May and other U.K. leaders also have been aggressively pushing for tech companies to take more action to help law enforcement counter terrorist attacks.

Following an attack in Westminster earlier this year, Home Secretary Amber Rudd placed blame on encrypted messaging platform WhatsApp after it was discovered the attacker had a smartphone and was apparently communicating with others through WhatsApp. Because of the encryption, law enforcement was unable to determine what the attacker was talking about with others.

Rudd called for platforms like the Facebook-owned WhatsApp and others like Signal to cooperate in investigations into terrorist attacks, and suggested encrypted communications have allowed terrorists to hide their conversations from law enforcement.

Read: Do Encryption Apps, Social Media Help Terrorism? UK Prime Minister Wants Tech Companies To Do More

Last month, a leaked technical draft of the United Kingdom’s Investigatory Powers Act showed the government may grant itself the ability to demand technology companies provide a backdoor into encrypted messaging services by forcing companies to maintain and disclose user data when requested by law enforcement.

The push for more cooperation from social media services and encrypted apps has gone on for several years in the U.K. Former Prime Minister David Cameron once suggested blocking encrypted messaging services unless they provided a government backdoor following the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris.

May also used the annual Group of Seven meeting in May to push other industrialized countries — including the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan — to do more to fight online extremism, including the development of strategies to push social networks to remove extremist content.

May is not alone in her push for stricter rules. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor Party leader Bill Shorten joined in the call for cooperation from social media and messaging platforms following a terrorist attack in Melbourne earlier this month.

Similar sentiments have existed in the U.S. though have been back-burnered in recent years. Following the San Bernardino shooting in late 2015, there was a push to force tech companies — in particular, Apple — to break their encryption protocols to grant law enforcement access to content on devices. Apple didn’t comply, but the FBI eventually was able to gain access regardless.