The Home Secretary was right to reprimand tech companies – terrorists should have no place to hide
Because that’s just what WhatsApp — owned by Facebook — lets them do
Give and tech
THERE really shouldn’t be any need to bring in new laws to force tech companies to cooperate with the security services.
But unless they start to behave properly there will be no alternative.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is right to read them the riot act and tell them the terrorists should have no place to hide.
Because that’s just what WhatsApp — owned by Facebook — lets them do. By encrypting messages, it stops the police being able to track terror plots.
They can’t even investigate in the aftermath of a terrorist atrocity, as with the WhatsApp messages Khalid Masood sent before he carried out his attack last week.
Google allows terrorists to post training videos on YouTube and it refuses to remove other dangerous sites on its servers.
Ms Rudd is hopeful that when she hauls a bunch of them in to the Home Office on Thursday, they’ll agree to do the right thing.
If they’d any sense of humility, they would do. But that’s the last word anyone could use to describe them.
Their defining feature is their arrogance.
The likes of Facebook and Google behave as if they are bigger and more important than any nation or elected politician.
On past form, all they’ll do after meeting Ms Rudd is tell their PR merchants to carry on defending the indefensible.
It’s time they started to face the consequences of their behaviour.
Taken for fuels
IF Theresa May is serious about tackling energy price rip-offs she needs to move beyond the Big Six providers and look at the fuel giants, too.
FairFuelUK has calculated that even after last week’s pump price cuts, fuel is still at least 2p per litre higher than it should be.
The savings from the recent fall in the oil price haven’t been passed on to drivers.
That means the fuel giants are keeping the money for themselves.
It’s a £6billion rip-off that must be investigated and their murky pricing arrangements properly scrutinised.
Special glum
IT’S weird enough that anyone would take offence at being called “love”.
Who wouldn’t want a smile and a kind word from a football steward?
So it’s barking that sour-faced Manchester United bosses made Vince Miller jump before he was pushed — for being friendly.
Then again, maybe they were just entering into the spirit of Jose Mourinho’s post-match interviews.