Apple, Google and other tech giants slam proposal to snoop on encrypted chats

Washington: Top tech giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft have slammed a proposal by the UK intelligence agency GCHQ to snoop on users’ encrypted chats.

In an open letter published on Lawfare, a group of 47 tech firms on Thursday criticised the move, asking the agency to abandon its plans for a so-called “ghost protocol”.

The signatories of the open letter argued that the proposal by the UK cyber security agency would require two major changes to their systems which would, in turn, compromise the users’ privacy.

“First, it would require service providers to surreptitiously inject a new public key into a conversation in response to a government demand.