On Privacy Day, European end-to-end encrypted services
ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota are calling on EU policy
makers to rethink proposals made in December’s Council Resolution on
Encryption
In December 2020, The Council of the European Union released a
five-page resolution that called for the EU to pass new rules to govern
the use of end-to-end encryption in Europe. We strongly oppose this
resolution because it foreshadows an attack on encryption.
We were not the only European-based end-to-end encrypted service
that was alarmed by the EU’s sudden shift against privacy. Along with
Threema, Tresorit, and Tutanota, we are sharing the following joint
statement
Now that more and more Internet users exercise their right to
privacy by using encrypted services like Threema, the EU Council
suddenly questions this fundamental right by proposing to deliberately
weaken the encryption of secure Internet services.
In a joint statement, we, together with ProtonMail, Tresorit, and
Tutanota, outline why this proposal is not only misguided but also
counterproductive and dangerous, and we ask the EU Council to adhere to
the spirit of the Data Privacy Day and acknowledge the importance of
privacy for democracy
The Council of the European Union is currently pushing through
proposals that will result in backdoors being installed in end-to-end
encrypted platforms like email, messaging and file sharing apps – a step
they claim is possible to make without breaking encryption or violating
citizens’ rights to privacy.
This process is akin to giving law enforcement a key to every
citizen’s home – a process that would violate the privacy rights of any
individual, and one we should take into account when considering how
these processes would affect the integrity of a person’s inbox, messages
and files
A backdoor is naturally a bulk intervention. It’s inherently
disproportionate. There’s no one-time, single-user ‘backdoor’. At that
point you’re basically talking about legally sanctioned hacking of a
target suspect. Which is a whole other kettle of security fish.
It’s also worth noting the Commission agenda commits EU lawmakers
to maintaining "the effectiveness of encryption in protecting privacy
and security of communications
More reading, credit to this commenter on Reddit:
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The December 2020 oxymoronical talk of the EU lawmakers can be found here:
and is undercut here