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Caroline Lucas has been forced to clarify the Green Partys position on mass internet surveillance after accidentally saying she wanted to ban companies from using end-to-end encryption as part of the fight against terrorism.

During a live television interview on Sunday morning, the Green Partys co-leader said services such as the popular messaging service WhatsApp should be stopped from scrambling peoples data.

Too many ends in one question! To be clear, Greens do not want to end end to end encryption

Caroline Lucas

Many technology companies currently use end-to-end encryption to protect their users against eavesdropping. However critics of the measures argue that such security makes them more attractive for terrorists looking for a safe way to communicate.

End-to-end encryption renders messages meaningless if they are intercepted by a third party. The potential issue with banning end-to-end encryption is that moves to stop such data scrambling could allow everyones messages to be read- by security services as well as other potential snoopers not just those of suspected terrorists.

Read more:Amber Rudd must realise a back door in encryption wont make us more secure itll help criminals

Asked on the BBCs Andrew Marr Show if she was in favour of putting a stop to this, Ms Lucas replied: Do I think that ending end-to-end encryption is wrong? No.

But shortly after her appearance on the programme, she reversed her position, telling her Twitter followers that she had misunderstood the question.

Too many ends in one question! To be clear, Greens do not want to end end to end encryption, she wrote.

The partys manifesto states that the internet should be free of state and corporate surveillance to protect the rights and freedoms of individual citizens.

Our policy is about opposing the mass industrial scale surveillance of emails, she said, claiming that having to sift through so much information could actually make the job of the security services more difficult.

The bigger you make the haystack in which youre looking for the needle, the harder it is to find it, she added.

Encryption explained as simply as possible

Having all of that extra surveillance doesnt work. Its targeted surveillance that really makes the difference.

She also pointed out that she and other Green Party colleagues such as Baroness Jenny Jones were on a list of UK domestic extremists due to their environmental activism, arguing that this was a waste of police resources.

The issue of end-to-end encryption has come back under the spotlight in the wake of last weeks terrorist attack on Manchester.

Following the Westminster attack in March, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said it was completely unacceptable that security services were unable to read WhatsApp messages sent by the perpetrator Khalid Masood.

However she too appeared to misunderstand the intricacies of such technology in an embarrassing appearance on the Andrew Marr show.

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Caroline Lucas in ending end-to-end encryption gaffe on Andrew Marr show - iNews