WhatsApp and Messenger are very popular messaging apps.
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The European Union is arranging for a crackdown on data obtained with end-to-end encryption following the terrorist attacks in Paris, Vienna and Nice.
In a joint statement issued earlier this month, the home ministers of EU member states instructed heads of state to “consider the issue of data encryption so that digital evidence can be legally collected and used by competent authorities.”
The statement came after some EU internal documents on encryption were leaked. One, published by Native Politico, takes action against end-to-end encryption as a way to combat child abuse, suggesting that “the fight against this type of illegal content has been the most controversial.”
End-to-end encryption is a security tool used by some applications and services – including WhatsApp, Signal and Facebook Messenger – to provide a high level of privacy.
Messages sent using this tool are encrypted before leaving the sender’s phone or computer, with a unique key for devices on either end of the exchange. Even if they are intercepted during transmission by a hacker or a government agency, the messages are not readable, as the only devices capable of decoding them are those of the sender and the intended recipient.
This secrecy also poses a problem for artists in the state trying to track criminal communications: the ability to intercept illegal messages is only useful if you can actually read them.
EU lawmakers have long sought a balance between privacy and the ability of police agencies to do their jobs, an EU spokesman told CNBC.
Member States have, on several occasions, called for compromises that allow law enforcement and other competent authorities legal access to digital evidence without restricting or weakening encryption. “
As determined in the July Security Union Strategy, the group favors an approach that “maintains the effectiveness of both encryption to protect confidentiality and communications security, while also responding effectively to serious crime and terrorism.”
The European Union’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Giles de Caraway, has sought to do this by advocating a “back-door” approach as his “front-door” counterpart, through which third parties work with him, without consent. Of the encryption provider.
Privacy education and review site Proprietary researcher Ray Walsh says this approach is impossible. “Whether you choose to call a purposefully developed secondary access point ‘front-door’ or backdoor, the result is the abolition of data ownership and access access control, which inevitably results in fundamental vulnerabilities,” he told CNBC.
“Ministers want to take their cake and eat it, and they don’t understand, or want to accept, that this is impossible and the result is weakness through design,” he added.
“If such a law is passed, it could be extremely harmful to the general public.”
Alex Clarkson, a spokesman for German and European and international studies at King’s College Lodge London, says the measures being discussed are “an ongoing part of governments’ agenda for a while.”
Both he and Walsh insist they remain only in discussion at this stage.
Clarkson describes the proposals simply as “what the bureaucracy does”, as part of a political “wish list” made up of a whole range of options. “Some parts of these systems will have motivation towards these things, and another part of the system will investigate against it, and take a balance against it,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean they like those options.”
Still, Walsh is wary that the “back-door” approach is up for debate. “This also poses difficulties for national security and data privacy, without really reducing the likelihood that criminals will find a covert way to communicate through the Dark Web or other encrypted media.”
“Anyone in a free and open society has the human right to be able to communicate freely and in private,” he says. “Removing citizens’ ability to share information without observation will lead to higher levels of self-censorship and the inability of people to exercise their freedom of expression.”
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