According to reports, after a series of terrorist attacks in Paris, Vienna, and Nice, the European Union (EU) seems to be preparing for operations that have accepted end-to-end encrypted data.
In a joint statement issued earlier this month, the interior ministers of EU member states called on heads of state to “think carefully about data encryption so that the competent authorities can legally collect and use digital evidence.”
Before this statement was issued, several internal EU documents concerning encrypted data were leaked. Initially, it was a statement issued by Politico, proposing some measures against end-to-end encryption as a way to combat child abuse content. The statement said: “The crackdown on such illegal content is the least controversial.”
End-to-end encryption is a security tool used by some applications and services (including WhatsApp, Signal, and Facebook Messenger) to provide a higher level of privacy protection services.
The information sent using end-to-end encryption tools will be encrypted before it leaves the sender’s mobile phone or computer. The key used is the only key used to exchange the devices of both parties. Even if this information is intercepted by hackers or government agencies during transmission, the information is unreadable because only devices from the sender and receiver can decode the information.
This form of confidentiality poses a problem for countries trying to monitor the communications of criminal gangs: the ability to intercept illegal information is only useful if you can actually read the content of illegal information.
An EU spokesperson said that for a long time, EU lawmakers have been seeking a better balance between the privacy rights of citizens and the scope of police work.
European Union member states have called for solutions on multiple occasions to allow law enforcement and other authorities to legally obtain digital evidence without prohibiting or weakening encryption.
As stated in the Security Union Strategy in July, the European Union chose to support such an approach: “It not only maintains the effectiveness of encryption in protecting privacy and communication security, but also can effectively respond to serious crimes and terrorism. “
The EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove (Gilles de Kerchove) tried to achieve this goal by avoiding the “back-door”, which he believed was related to the “front-door”. The corresponding method is to formally cooperate with a third-party encryption provider, instead of acting without their consent.
However, Ray Walsh, a researcher at the privacy education review site ProPrivacy, said that this method is impossible. He said in an interview with the media: “Whether you choose to call a specially developed auxiliary access point a’front door’ or a’back door’, the result is the elimination of data ownership and access control, which will inevitably It will lead to a fundamental loophole.”
He added: “The ministers want to have both fish and bear’s paws, but they don’t seem to understand and don’t want to admit that this is impossible, and this behavior will consciously cause the vulnerability of the data encryption system. If such legislation If it is passed, the general public will be greatly harmed.”
Alex Clarkson, a lecturer in German-speaking, European and International Studies at King’s College London, points out that measures like this one under discussion “have become an ongoing part of the government’s agenda.”
But he and Walsh both emphasized that it is only a discussion at this time.
Clarkson described these proposals simply as “what the bureaucracy is doing” and part of a political “wish list” composed of a series of decisions. He said: “Some parts of these systems will generate an impulse, and another part of the system will check and balance this impulse. But this does not necessarily mean that they will choose these decisions.”
Nevertheless, Walsh is still worried that this so-called “backdoor” approach will cause controversy. He said: “This will cause problems for national security and data privacy, but in fact it will not reduce the possibility of criminals finding secret communication methods, such as the dark web or other encryption methods.”
He said: “In any free and open society, the ability to communicate freely in private is a basic human right. Depriving citizens of the ability to share information without being observed will lead to greater self-censorship and make people unable to Exercise the right to freedom of speech.”
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