Conservative party member Amber Rudd has resigned as Home Secretary. The announcement came following the Windrush immigration scandal, during which Rudd claimed to not have set deportation targets. Yet on Sunday, The Guardian published a letter addressed to Theresa May in which Rudd did indeed set out targets to deport 10% more illegal immigrants over the “next few years”.
Fellow Conservative Sajid Javid will replace Rudd. Whilst the Home Secretary’s main focus is on immigration and citizenship, they also have remit over policing and national security, which often feature tech in some way. So, what did Rudd do for the UK’s burgeoning technology industry, and what can we expect from her successor?
Counter-terrorism tech
The majority of Rudd’s work on tech policy, especially in 2017, was based on anti-terrorism efforts. Alongside a huge £707m pot to support law enforcement in tackling terrorism, in July 2017, Rudd spearheaded plans to change end-to-end encryption laws, amid government worries that the technology was being leveraged by terrorists to help them plot attacks. In the wake of the Manchester Attack, the government moved to enforce powers that would mean the likes of Apple and Facebook would have to hand over encrypted messages to terror investigations. Rudd had to approve each order, which would mean police and MI5 could request encryption to be removed from messages sent by suspects. ...