Concerns Rise Over EU's Encryption Plan: "Undermines End-to-End Encryption"

By Netvora Tech News

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A coalition of experts, companies, and social organizations has expressed deep concern over the European Union's new internal security strategy, which they claim will harm the use of end-to-end encryption in Europe. The Global Encryption Coalition argues that the strategy's focus on encryption will make all Europeans less safe. In April, Brussels presented the new internal security strategy, dubbed ProtectEU, which includes a "Roadmap for lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement agencies." The plan also involves a Technology Roadmap for encryption, as well as an "impact assessment" to revise EU data retention rules. The European Commission aims to find and evaluate technological solutions that would allow law enforcement agencies to access encrypted data. "We are now working on a roadmap and will certainly look at what is technically feasible, but at the political level, the problem is that our law enforcement agencies are losing ground to criminals because our investigators do not have access to data," said Finnish Commissioner for Digital Sovereignty, Safety, and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen. According to the experts, the European Commission is trying to undermine or circumvent encryption. "This undermines the security goals of the ProtectEU strategy, which emphasizes the importance of resilience and readiness against more sophisticated cyber threats. Undermining encryption weakens the foundation of secure communication and systems, making individuals, businesses, and public institutions more vulnerable to attacks." The experts have called on the European Commission to address three key issues. First, strong encryption should not be seen as an obstacle to European security, but rather as a prerequisite. Second, the roadmap should highlight the importance of encryption. Third, more parties, experts, companies, and social organizations should be involved in the roadmap. The open letter is signed by organizations such as AMS-IX, Big Brother Watch, Bits of Freedom, Chaos Computer Club, Electronic Frontier Foundation, European Digital Rights, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Internet Society, Matrix.org Foundation, Mozilla, Surfshark, Tuta, Vrijschrift.org, Jon Callas, Bruce Schneier, Adam Shostack, Kenn White, Matthew Wright, and Philip Zimmermann.