Rudd said technology companies were not doing enough to beat "the enemy" on the internet.

Encryption tools used by messaging apps had become a "problem", she added. Rudd is meeting with representatives from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and others at a counter-terrorism forum in San Francisco. Tuesday's summit is the first gathering of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an organisation set up by the major companies in the wake of recent terror attacks.

In a joint statement, the companies taking part said they were co-operating to "substantially disrupt terrorists' ability to use the internet in furthering their causes, while also respecting human rights."

In an op-ed, she described a group of people she called “real people”. Real people apparently prefer ease of use and a multitude of features to perfect, unbreakable security. Real people don’t use WhatsApp because it is end-to-end encrypted but because it is an incredibly user-friendly and cheap way of staying in touch with friends and family.

She claimed even companies were constantly making trade-offs between security and 'usability,' so why should “real people” have encryption.

As the private school educated daughter of a stock broker who was once hired as an “aristocracy co-ordinator” for the movie business and director of two Bahamas based asset management companies, Rudd would know a lot about what “real people” need.