According to some of the families of the people who went missing from Kasaragod district in Kerala, the youngsters who went in search of a ‘true Sharia country’ were using the Telegram app to communicate.
The app has an option of ‘secret chat’, which a few of them were using. The feature allows messages to self-destruct after being read.
Most of the families including that of 23-year-old Hafeesudheen had received messages that they were in a Sharia country.
“The message came and it disappeared after a while,” Hafeesudheen’s father Hakeem told The News Minute.
Not just Hafeesuddhin, others like Dr Ijaz, Shihaz, Rashid were also using the same service to send secret messages to their families.
Hafeesudheen, Ijaz and around 19 others, including three children, left their homes in Kasaragod and Palakkad citing various reasons. While some of them told their families they were going to Sri Lanka, others had said they were off to Lakshwadeep.
More than a month after their disappearance, their families started getting messages, which had lead the families and police to believe that all of them have gone together to the same destination.
The Kerala police and central authorities are investigating if they had links to any Jihadi outfits including Islamic State.
The Argument Against End-to-End Encryption
End-to-end encryption is a result of the post-Edward Snowden era which revealed governments’ tendency to spy and snoop on private communication.
And while the idea behind it may be to ensure privacy and protection of intellectual property, lawmakers argue that it enables what the FBI calls “going dark” – referring to the increasing hurdles that authorities face in accessing communication data even when they may be authorised to.
The usage of end-to-end encryption by extremist organisations hinders surveillance by security personnel. These groups use this knowledge to their advantage and carry out most of their operational conversations on platforms which provide encryption.
How Radical Groups can Use End-to-End Encryption to Their Advantage
This is not the first time that end-to-end encryption has hindered lawmakers and security.
In 2015, Telegram ran into controversy due to reports of Islamic State using the public broadcast feature of the app to openly broadcast their propaganda. Ultimately, Telegram had to block 78 such channels. And while arguments were raised about their end-to-end encryption feature then too, this is what Pavel Durov, one of the developers of the app, had to say:
More recently, since WhatsApp also introduced end-to-end encryption in April, terrorist groups like Islamic State have been increasingly using it, along with Telegram, to communicate.
Meanwhile, app companies defend encryption, maintaining that while they are willing to cooperate with law enforcement, a blanket lift would mean exposing users’ private information to hackers and cyber criminals too.
(With inputs from The News Minute)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)