What the papers say: Are tech companies doing enough to tackle terror?

Amber Rudd has vowed to ‘call time’ on tech companies who are giving terrorists ‘a place to hide’. The Home Secretary’s comments come after it emerged that Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was sending encrypted message on WhatsApp in the lead-up to the attack; Rudd is ‘right to read them the Riot Act’, says the Sun, which ups the criticism of WhatsApp in its editorial this morning. The paper says that if tech companies don’t start behaving then ‘there will be no alternative’ but for the Government to bring in new legislation to force them to co-operate with the security services. After all, when Rudd says that companies like WhatsApp are giving the terrorists a place to hide, the Sun says simply: she’s right – ‘Because that’s just what WhatsApp — owned by Facebook — lets them do’. WhatsApp aren’t the only ones at fault here, though; ‘Google allows terrorists to post ­training videos on YouTube’, the paper says, while Facebook too ‘behaves as if they are bigger and more important than any nation or elected politician.’