France and Germany Demand Decrypted Messaging After Violent Attacks

France and Germany Demand Decrypted Messaging After Violent Attacks
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The ongoing dispute between government agencies and tech companies over encryption has begun to broil in Europe, which has seen a rash of violent domestic terrorist attacks in recent months. France and Germany have called on the EU to require messaging apps to release encrypted data to law enforcement officials.

End-to-end encryption, which protects communications between parties, and other security measures implemented by popular messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram can impede efforts to thwart terrorism, intelligence officials have often complained. As such, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere have issued a joint proposal to the EU calling for a law that would oblige tech companies to decrypt and turn over data pertinent to terrorism investigations.

Germany and France, in particular, have been the focal point of terrorist attacks over the past year. Patrick Calvar, French security chief, has been quoted in The Financial Times, saying that there are “gigabytes” of data collected from such incidents that are “often encrypted and impossible to decipher.”

The proposal has also been criticized by privacy and data security advocates who argue that creating backdoors can end up jeopardizing end-to-end encryption and compromising privacy for all users, rather than suspected extremists. Because end-to-end encryption requires that the operators themselves be unable to access and decrypt messages, the law proponed by France and Germany calling for decryption on demand may undermine end-to-end encryption and practically ban it.

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