Turkish Government Cracks Down on Encryption, Threatens Human Rights

Encryption has been under attack in many locations around the world lately, including Turkey. The Turkish government breached the weak security of messaging app, ByLock, and used the cyber intelligence gained to make countless arrests of people involved with the recent attempted coup on the Turkish government.

Despite users on ByLock allegedly switching to the more secure messaging app, Whatsapp, by the time they began planning the coup, Turkish officials still had evidence of ranking military personnel and other operatives communicating and coordinating on ByLock. Allegedly, the software developers behind ByLock had left important information unencrypted and vulnerable.

The Turkish government has been known to detain IT trainers and others involved with Internet security, in order to better keep a strong grasp on citizen communications. In this case, the information they obtained from unencrypting communications has lead to arrests in the country, raising some serious questions about Internet security, and the right to privacy in communications.  At Golden Frog, we’ve always been advocates for privacy – whether that be online or while using messaging apps.  We also believe in the importance of strong end-to-end encryption.

We stand with other Internet privacy advocates to condemn Turkey’s detention of these innocent digital security trainers, and call for strong unbreakable encryption at all times, to better safeguard the rights and freedoms of the Turkish people.