SECURITY measures being proposed by Theresa May in the wake of the London Bridge atrocity – including sweeping internet restrictions – will only drive would-be terrorists to other forms of communication, according to a leading cyber security expert.

The Prime Minister has indicated that she wants to restrict the kinds of things people can post online and force internet companies to weaken security so intelligence agencies can read their messages. She has not ruled out “taking down” rogue internet companies, in much the same way as China has, and wants to force companies to put backdoors in encrypted services.

May told the Evening Standard: “I think what we need to do is see how we can regulate.”

But Dan Brown, a cyber security consultant with FarrPoint, in Edinburgh, said such action would drive sites to the unregulated dark web.

He told The National: “Attackers will be pushed even further from the Government’s current surveillance effort as they use services that the Government cannot restrict.

“They would push the public sites to the Dark Web, not only making them harder to track but harder to take down.

If the websites did not move, they would push the attackers to use better encryption to circumvent the controls blocking the websites.”

Apps which encrypt messages between users, which have been used in previous terror attacks, is also seen as a target for a government crackdown, which Brown said would simply see users move elsewhere.

“Encryption can be applied on many levels,” he said. “When using encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal the only thing encrypted is the message itself. When using Tor (aka Dark Web) all the content passing through it is encrypted.

“Understanding encryption to a level of protecting yourself from interception and eavesdropping can be complex and as to the technical prowess of terrorists, it’s likely they are no more adept at this than any criminal organisations who use the internet to communicate.

“If the Government were to regulate encryption to allow them to decrypt messages, then history has taught us that it’s normally followed by users shifting to other mechanisms pretty quickly.”

He said the main argument against restricting online access was the lack of a failsafe way of blocking anything.

“Anyone motivated enough to access something will do so eventually, all the block is doing is forcing them to use more complex, obfuscated paths to get there,” he said. “People who you want to surveil will be forced to be sneakier and hide even more.

“People who you don’t want to surveil will be inconvenienced and have their privacy violated and worst of all you are installing a capability that is SO powerful that it would be hard for any government not to use it for the pursuit of their own goals, political or otherwise.

“We have seen this over and over again in places with civil unrest. Additionally, the collection of this sensitive data is very likely to be leaked deliberately or accidentally causing significant harm to those affected.”

Brown said May’s measures are simply the Government trying to reassure people that it is doing something to solve the problem.

He added: “The UK already has an existing capability to block websites via ISPs. This needs to be applied to extremist websites to stop the radicalisation of British nationals. “Social media sites also need to be strongly encouraged to take down offensive and objectionable material more quickly than currently they do.

“Some of the attackers identified there were already known to the security services. The intelligence services should have been able to take this knowledge, break into the phone and/or laptop of the attacker and find out all information without having to breach the privacy and freedom of the whole country.”