Here’s why - according with The Washington Post.
The world's biggest tech firms — including Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo — are pressing for changes to a proposed British law aimed at expanding the government's electronic surveillance powers.
Rather than protect well-meaning citizens, the bill will force tech firms to hack their own customers -- and in the process break the laws of other countries, some of the companies said in filings Monday to a U.K. panel charged with reviewing the proposed legislation. The bill could also set a precedent for other governments and even repressive regimes to impose draconian requirements on tech firms concerning user data.
Law enforcement agencies around the globe have stepped up their requests for greater authority in the weeks following a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino in the United States. Public officials have called for new ways to spy on terrorist groups and their communications, some of which is said to take place secretly on encrypted Internet messaging platforms.
UK officials argue that the ability to intercept and view digital communications in transit "are essential to tackle child sexual exploitation, to dismantle serious crime cartels, take drugs and guns off our streets and prevent terrorist attacks."
But tech companies say the Investigatory Powers bill could lead to abuse. It would open the door, they say, to demands that U.S. firms provide authorities with special access into otherwise secure communications, undermining privacy for all. "The reality is, if you put a backdoor in, that back door for everybody — for good guys and bad guys," Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday. Apple struck much the same tone in its feedback to the U.K. government Monday.
"The best minds in the world cannot rewrite the laws of mathematics," reads the filing, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. "Any process that weakens the mathematical models that protect user data will by extension weaken the protection."
Privacy analysts said Monday that the Investigatory Powers bill would set a remarkable surveillance precedent.
By Brian Fung, who covers technology for The Washington Post, focusing on telecommunications and the Internet.