On Sunday 21 April, the European police cooperation agency Europol and the heads of all the European national police forces launched an “appeal to industry and governments” to “take urgent measures” to do away with the end-to-end encryption used by messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal, according to several European media.
With end-to-end encryption, used to protect private communications, “companies will not be able to respond effectively to a lawful authority. Nor will they be able to identify or report illegal activities on their platforms. As a result, we will simply not be able to keep the public safe”.
For the signatories, “technical solutions exist; they simply require flexibility from industry as well as from governments”.
The declaration therefore calls on “the technology industry to build in security by design, to ensure they maintain the ability to both identify and report harmful and illegal activities, such as child sexual exploitation, and to lawfully and exceptionally act on a lawful authority”.
Link to the declaration: https://aeur.eu/f/bw1 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)