WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart backed Signal’s stance against UK’s Online Safety Bill and said the Bill could make Signal’s privacy features illegal.

On Thursday, Cathcart told the reporters at the London offices of Meta Platforms that the Online Safety Bill could make the service’s privacy features illegal, adding that the service will not change its encryption standards.

“It’s a global product; there isn’t a way to change it in just one part of the world,” Cathcart was quoted by The Strait Times. “We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. We’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that.”

Ms Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal Foundation, told the BBC that her messaging service, Signal, would leave Britain if the Online Safety Bill forced it to weaken its privacy protections. 

Whittaker called on the UK to reconsider the “misguided” Bill and recorded: “As written, the Bill contains provisions that are positioned to undermine encryption, and could create an unprecedented regime of mass surveillance that would all but eliminate the ability of people in the UK to communicate with each other outside of government interference.”

Whittaker added: “When the Iranian government blocked Signal, we recognized that the people in Iran who needed privacy were not represented by the authoritarian state, and we worked with our community to set up proxies and other means to ensure that Iranians could access Signal.

“As in Iran, we will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that people in the UK have access to Signal and to private communications. But we will not undermine or compromise the privacy and safety promises we make to people in the UK, and everywhere else in the world.”

The Bill does not explicitly describe a blocking mechanism, but calls for fines of as much as 10 per cent of annual global revenue if companies do not comply.

It also could lead to criminal charges against executives if they do not provide Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator, details on how they run their services upon request.

“If you see a lot of grey area combined with a lot of rhetoric against encryption, the right thing to do is to worry,” Mr Cathcart said.

Mr Cathcart, who is based in California, arrived in London to lobby against the Bill amid a scandal involving leaked WhatsApp messages between the former health secretary and ministers, including Mr Johnson.

The Department for Science, Information and Technology said it is on track to pass the Bill this parliamentary session, which runs until the second half of 2023.

(Source: The Straits Times)