My Lords, I will speak to our Amendments 252 to 254 and the other amendments in this group. To save the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, having to get to his feet, this one is from Apple.
As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, just outlined, it is essential that end-to-end encryption is not compromised by technical capability notices.
I anticipate that the Minister might say that Clause 231(3)(c) covers this in that it would not be technically feasible for the operator to remove electronic protection of this nature, but we support this amendment and believe that it needs to be explicit in the Bill. However, we do not believe that this amendment covers other forms of encryption. Our Amendment 252 is intended to protect UK operators from the real or perceived disadvantage they would be placed under if technical capability notices required them to make modifications that would make their product or service less secure than overseas operators, who may not be subject to or may refuse to comply with a similar technical capability notice.
Similarly, Amendment 253 is intended to prevent a technical capability notice stopping UK operators from innovating to improve the levels of security or encryption provided by their products and services in a way that would disadvantage them against overseas operators, which may not be subject to or refuse to comply with a similar technical capability notice.
Amendment 254 is intended to deal with the criticism of our amendment in Committee by the Minister, who said that he believed that it,
“would remove the ?Government’s ability to give a technical capability notice to telecommunications operators requiring them to remove encryption from the communications of criminals, terrorists and foreign spies”.—[Official Report, 13/7/16; cols. 272-73.]
This new amendment makes it clear that technical assistance can be given to enable interpretation and deciphering provided that it does not open the door to unauthorised access to encrypted materials by criminals, terrorists and foreign spies—essentially, what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, just said.
Amendment 252A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Strasburger, is an attempt to combine all the other amendments in this group into a much better-worded amendment. I look forward to hearing from him why this might be the case.