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Alan Macleod
The end of online privacy
T
he European Union is rushing through new legislation to get rid of end to end digital encryption. This would mean the end of privacy for users of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. A European Council draft resolution on encryption quietly published in early November lays out the EU’s Orwellian position in detail. “The European Union fully supports the development, implementation and use of strong encryption”. it states, “Encryption is a necessary means of protecting fundamental rights
and the digital security of governments, industry and society”. Yet in the very next sentence it insists that, “At the same time, the European Union needs to ensure the ability of competent authorities” to “exercise their lawful powers, both online and offline”. These “competent authorities” (a phrase occurring throughout the document) refer to law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities. “Protecting the privacy and security of communications through encryption and at the same time upholding the possibility for competent authorities in
the area of security and criminal justice to lawfully access relevant data for legitimate, clearly defined purposes infighting serious and/or organised crimes and terrorism, including in the digital world, are extremely important”, it concludes. Thus, the EU’s position is that its citizens should be able to hide their data from criminals, but not from the government or its various spying agencies. The official justification for these new laws, Austrian public service broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk reports, is the Vienna terrorist attack of
ColdType | Mid-November 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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