The British Internal Security Service MI5 head is concerned about Facebook’s plans to make users’ data more secure.
Terrorists and child molesters have a “license” to know that their activities on the Internet have been hidden from view, CEO Ken McCallum told Times Radio.
The MI5 boss said Facebook wants to “fully encrypt” messages that users send to each other. For example, their privacy must be guaranteed, but according to McCallum, the “worst people in our society” can take advantage of it. He wants the authorities to be able to request information about the internet behaviour of users through the courts.
The security chief also stressed that privacy was essential. “We absolutely don’t want a society where the government puts a camera in every living room,” he said in the interview. “But our job is to take into account a scenario that only occurs 1 in a million times: that the living room is also the living room of a terrorist.”
It was McCallum’s first interview since he took office last year as chief executive of MI5, the sister organization of foreign intelligence agency MI6. The internal security service also opened an account on Facebook under his leadership. He now has about 113,000 followers.