The digital ministry of France has announced that the French government is developing its own encrypted messenger service so that they can avoid the risk that enemies could spy on the private conversations between top French officials. None of the world’s major encrypted messaging apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram are based in France. To ensure the privacy of the government, almost 20 officials and top civil servants are testing the new app which is being built.
The application is designed by a state-employed developer and its use is expected to become mandatory for the government in the summer of 2018. The government spokesman said, “We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not encrypted by the United States or Russia. You start thinking about the potential breaches that could happen, as we saw with Facebook, so we should take the lead.” In 2014, when Facebook bought Whatsapp, it came under strict criticism since it acknowledged taking the data of millions of users. The data went into wrong hands and ended up with a political consultancy named Cambridge Analytica.
To protect such data breach, the French government has developed an encrypted app which will be made available to all the citizens soon. The spokeswoman declined to give the names of the codes or the messaging services. Macron, the economy minister of France, started using the Telegram app for their election campaign last year. He wanted to use an encrypted messaging service which cannot be cracked by his rivals in the government. The privacy concerns started to grow earlier this year after Facebook scandal came to light.