EU to search for backgrounds in encrypted apps to access police

News Analysis

Under a plan announced by the European Commission in April, encrypted messaging apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp will be forced to provide digital backdoors so that police and security services can read secure messages.

Apart from potential concerns about government snooping, one analyst says the purpose of a crime can backfire by providing criminals with an entry point to valuable personal information.

The committee said law enforcement agencies need “legal access to data.” This means giving backdoor entries to encrypted apps and other tools that rely on end-to-end encryption.

Cyber ​​Theory Institute fellow Andy Jenkinson said opening backdoor encryption without having a government server “is not just a recklessness, it’s an invitation to catastrophe.”

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“The moral, legal and security consequences of such actions will echo far beyond the intended target,” he told The Epoch Times.

Jenkinson, who wrote “Stuxnet to Sunburst: 20 years of digital exploitation and cyber warfare,” said there are two main issues. First, they said they could design ways cybercriminals could misuse backdoors to access encrypted apps, and then they could intercept data as different governments were told, as they were run by different governments.

The French government has recently sought to introduce a cryptographic background.

“Once introduced, backdoors can be misused by other parties, from foreign agents to hackers. As a result, the private message of citizens who comply with all laws can be compromised,” Doloff said. “This is why, as I said before, Telegram withdraws the market and violates basic human rights rather than undermining encryption in the background. Unlike some of its competitors, it does not trade privacy for market share.”

“But the fight continues and we need to continue to break this drum until we see positive statements from lawmakers and law enforcement officials around the world. The backdoor is not your interests, not your interests, the interests of the government, they are not the interests of the corporations.”

Following Takedown of Phantom Secure, the FBI has developed its own encrypted app, AN0M, and arranged for it to be sold to unconscious criminals.

“We are not allowed to put out a net of fish like this in the Netherlands. “They need to justify a particular individual and we say there is a reasonable suspicion that he is committing a crime serious enough to justify this investigation measure.

Reisinger said that all EU countries have different laws and that law enforcement can use warrants to intercept or capture data from people on their territory, but not otherwise.

“If you want to go to the Dutch people, you need a Dutch judge to determine whether it is possible in accordance with national law and the protection of individual rights,” he said.

For Americans, such trolling of encrypted data to find evidence of a crime could be considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “irrational searches and seizures” without presumed cause and prohibits the Fifth Amendment, which protects the legal principles of the “die process.”

The European Human Rights Treaty is supposed to protect individuals. Article 6 gives an individual the right to a fair trial, and Article 8 says, “Everyone has the right to respect his private life and family life, home and communications.”

In 2024, Reisinger filed several separate appeals regarding Encrochat and Sky ECC only to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which covers only European Union countries, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, which covers the UK and several other non-EU countries.

Reisinger also said that French authorities “collect all personal communications, people, data and metadata, without justification, to violate their “right to privacy” when they gained access to Encrochat and Sky ECC.

“More importantly, if law enforcement wants to use this type of data as the sole or primary evidence in a criminal case, it requires that at least the right to a fair trial be required to be checked by a judge even for the illegality or reliability of the evidence,” Reisinger said.

He said that it is very common for ECHR rulings to take 4-5 years, so it could be 2028 or 2029 before the results are reached.

The committee states, “These measures respect the protection of strong encryption (…) and do not prohibit, limit or undermine encryption (“without background”). ”

The report states that digitalization is “an essential framework for accessing data that addresses the needs of enforcement of laws and protecting values, as it “will become broader and provides a source of new tools for criminals.”

The Protecteu document states that the committee will present a roadmap in the first half of 2025 and will set “legal and practical measures that we propose to take to ensure legal and effective access to data.”

The committee said it would create a “technology roadmap on encryption” to identify and evaluate solutions that will allow law enforcement to protect cybersecurity and fundamental rights in a legitimate way to encrypted data.

Jenkinson said the government cannot ensure its own critical infrastructure on a daily basis.

“Before mandating civilian privacy erosion, the Commission and its allies must confront their own systemic vulnerabilities,” Jenkinson said. “The European Commission’s new push to backdoor encrypted messaging reflects the dangerous precedent set by its US counterparts.