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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

The U.K. government urged social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to tackle terror posts on their sites as it reinforced its demand to allow access to encrypted messages.

We need to do more and we need to work with them to make sure they help us to do more, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said in an ITV interview Wednesday.

Following the attack by a suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a Manchester pop concert on Monday, supporters of Islamic State published a number of posts on Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Telegram boasting about the incident. Security services are investigating the possibility that the bomber, who was known to the authorities, was part of a wider network.

We mustnt underestimate that ISIS really want to commit these acts and are constantly trying to radicalize people, Rudd said.

Facebook and Twitter declined to comment. Spokespeople from Telegram could not be reached for comment.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays Conservative Party has taken a hard line against social-media platforms following the revelation that Khalid Masood, who killed five people in London in March, had used WhatsApp shortly before he began his rampage.

Rudd said at the time that Facebooks WhatsApp messaging system should open its encryption to security services and urged online companies to be more aggressive in shutting down sites exploited by terrorists.

U.K. legislation is set to force companies such as Facebook Inc. and its subsidiary WhatsApp Inc. to allow the U.K. government access to encrypted services upon request.

If approved, lawmakers are keen to apply this obligation to social-media platforms, said one government official speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that the companies have varied in their willingness to deal with government requests.

Tech giants such as Facebook, Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. have been keen to protect their encryption capabilities. Apple and the U.S. government engaged in a high-profile battle over data privacy and encryption following the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.

The Manchester attack comes just two weeks before a U.K. general election. The Conservatives, predicted to win the vote, have proposed tighter rules for how companies deal with hate speech and illegal content. In May, Parliaments Home Affairs Committee said Facebook, Google and Twitter were shamefully far from effectively managing extremist and hate content.

We need an international solution and the U.K. is going to take the lead in taking that forward, Rudd told ITV.

BetweenJuly and December last year, Twitter received 681 requests from U.K. law enforcement for user data, relating to 1,017 accounts, according to a report from the company published in March.

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Terror Posts, Encryption Targeted by U.K. Following Attack ... - Bloomberg