First report: Important developments and substantive issues, March-July 2016 2016, para. 30
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Never mind that the Investigatory Powers Bill should never have been proposed in its current form nor advanced to approval by the House of Commons in the first place. The discussion in the House of Lords to date has not been encouraging. Earl Howe, Minister of State for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, on 13 July 2016, said:
It may be entirely sensible for the government to work with [communication service providers] to determine whether it would be reasonably practicable to take steps to develop and maintain a technical capability to remove encryption that has been applied to communications or data.
Law enforcement and the intelligence agencies must retain the ability to require telecommunications operators to remove encryption in limited circumstances.