Four European apps which secure user data via end-to-end encryption, ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota, have issued a joint-statement warning over recent moves by EU institutions that they say are setting lawmakers on a dangerous path to backdooring encryption. From a report: Last month the EU Council passed a resolution on encryption that’s riven with contradiction — calling for “security through encryption and security despite encryption” — which the four e2e app makers believe is a thinly veiled call to backdoor encryption. The European Commission has also talked about seeking “improved access” to encrypted information, writing in a wide-ranging counter-terrorism agenda also published in December that it will “work with Member States to identify possible legal, operational, and technical solutions for lawful access.” Simultaneously, the Commission has said it will “promote an approach which both maintains the effectiveness of encryption in protecting privacy and security of communications, while providing an effective response to crime and terrorism.” And it has made it clear there will be no ‘one silver bullet’ as regards the e2e encryption security ‘challenge.’ But such caveats are doing nothing to alleviate the concerns of e2e encrypted app makers — who are convinced proposals from the Council of the EU, which is involved in adopting the bloc’s laws (though the Commission usually drafts legislation), sums to an push toward backdoors.
“While it’s not explicitly stated in the resolution, it’s widely understood that the proposal seeks to allow law enforcement access to encrypted platforms via backdoors,” the four app makers write, going on to warn that such a move would fatally underline the security EU institutions also claim to want to maintain. “The resolution makes a fundamental misunderstanding: Encryption is an absolute, data is either encrypted or it isn’t, users have privacy or they don’t,” they go on. “The desire to give law enforcement more tools to fight crime is obviously understandable. But the proposals are the digital equivalent of giving law enforcement a key to every citizen’s home and might begin a slippery slope towards greater violations of personal privacy.”
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot