Practice Safe Text Campaign launched
Open Rights Group has launched a new campaign, ‘Practice Safe Text’ which highlights the importance of end-to-end encryption in keeping our communications safe.
In particular, the campaign outlines why encryption is vital for families, activists and campaigners, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and politicians and policymakers.
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James Baker, Platform Power and Free Expression Programme Manager said:
“We want to raise awareness of how essential encryption is for keeping our online communications and transactions safe and secure.”
“Encryption is a shield against against stalkers, predators, hackers and criminals. People should practice safe texting using end-to-end encryption to keep their photo rolls and messages safe from creeps.”
“With authoritarianism on the rise ‘safe texting’ using end-to-end encryption is a vital safety measure in many countries around the world.”
“Cybersecurity experts agree that weakening encryption or creating ‘backdoors’ harms everyone’s safety. We want governments to promote security features not threaten them.”
Government powers to scan everyone’s private messages
The Online Safety Act gave Ofcom powers that could force companies to scan our private messages. When it was passed the government recognised that it was not ‘technically feasible’ to use these powers safely and has as yet not deployed them. ORG’s campaign aims to raise awareness of these dangerous powers and to ensure that they are never used.
Keeping your family’s data safe
In 2023, polling carried out on behalf of Index on Censorship found that many families in the UK rely on end-to-end encrypted messaging apps to share important information about their children: 61% shared information about their children’s health, 39% shared their children’s location data, and 55% shared information about their children’s schools. End-to-end encryption helps to ensure that this information is only seen by those who it is intended for.
Encryption and LGBTQ+ rights
ORG spoke with Radwa Fouda about the importance of encryption as an activist and their work with the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA) who told us:
“As a queer/trans individual it is utterly important to maintain the privacy of my communication, because the intersection of my queerness with my activism since 2011 is a golden recipe for a hyper-surveilled country such as Egypt.”
Shae Gardner, Director of Policy at the NGO LGBT Tech said: “For the millions and millions of LGBTQ+ individuals around the world, digital spaces serve as lifelines to resources, support and community that many are not able to seek in the physical world. Encryption makes those lifelines possible.”
Keeping government communications secure
Even though some politicians are calling for backdoors into encrypted services, they themselves need the security they provide. Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal notes: “Every military in the world uses Signal, every politician I’m aware of uses Signal. Every CEO I know uses Signal because anyone who has anything truly confidential to communicate recognises that storing that on a Meta database or in the clear on some Google server is not good practice.”
This is backed up by Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre who has written:
“End-to-end encryption exists, it works, and it makes sense. Tech companies know it and privacy campaigners know it. But so too do citizens. And, frankly, so too do policymakers.”
ORG’s campaign is launched days after Apple withdrew a security feature from the UK, which gives advanced protection for photos, videos and private documents that are stored in the cloud. The UK government had demanded that Apple build a backdoor so that they could access people’s data.
Longread: The case for encryption
Message scanning jeopardises privacy and security on a mass scale. End-to-end encyption helps us to stay safe online.
Find out morePetition: keep apple data encrypted
Stop the Home Office from putting our security at risk by demanding a backdoor into Apple’s encrypted services
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