Apparently they are threatening that if they don’t get the access they want they “may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative, or other measures” in order to get into locked devices and services.

Their statement came out of a meeting between nations in the Five Eyes pact, an intelligence sharing agreement between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The nations issued a statement covering a range of technology-related issues they face, but it was their remarks on encryption that stood out the most.

In their memo, the governments stress that these backdoors would only be for “lawful” access to a device, such as in a criminal investigation.

And they plan to start by encouraging tech companies to voluntarily add them. But the backdoors would only be voluntary to a point, because the governments say that they might mandate a way in if they “continue to encounter impediments” to accessing encrypted data.

Tech companies are wary about compliance. Adding a backdoor into their products would inherently mean that their promise of data privacy is broken. It would also mean that countries which don’t really respect human rights and law will insist on having the backdoor access for spying. The chance of the backdoor being kept secret is remote.

The group issued a memo on keeping online spaces free from child predators, terrorists, and other bad actors.

They asked tech companies to build tools that could prevent illegal content from “ever being uploaded.” Good luck on that.