MI5 Chief Slams Facebook Over Encryption, Says Gives "Free Pass" To Suspects

Facebook's plan to roll out end-to-end encryption across all its platforms gives offenders "a free pass where they know that nobody can see into what they are doing in those private living rooms", MI5 chief said.

Extremism on social media is as much a national security risk now as terrorism from Afghanistan or Syria, the head of UK domestic intelligence has warned as he slammed Facebook in particular. "Self-initiated terrorists" -- UK authorities' preferred term for "lone wolves" -- remain a bigger threat than plots on the scale of 9/11 or the "7/7" attacks of July 2005 on London, MI5 chief Ken McCallum told Times Radio in an interview aired Friday. He said that in the past four years, MI5 and London's Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism command have disrupted 29 "late-stage" plots, including 10 by far-right white extremists. Suspects have been as young as 13, usually after being radicalised online.