Brussels faces privacy crossroads over encryption backdoors
Europe, long seen as a bastion of privacy and digital rights, will debate this week whether to enforce surveillance on citizens’ devices.
Representatives from member states will meet on Friday to consider legislation critics call Chat Control, aka “laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse,” which seeks to require ISPs or messaging app providers to scan user content or backdoor encryption so that intelligence agencies can do it themselves. It’s the latest attempt in a three-year campaign by some in the community to allow government agencies unprecedented access to private communications.
The proposed legislation has been in the works since 2022 but immediately drew fire from security professionals. After being rejected by EU member states repeatedly, this latest attempt has come at the request of the Danish delegation, which currently holds the EU presidency, and should go to a full vote next month.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance