The EU has shared its plans to ostensibly keep the continent's denizens secure – and among the pages of bureaucratese are a few worrying sections that indicate the political union wants to backdoor encryption by 2026, or even sooner.
While the superstate has made noises about backdooring encryption before, the ProtectEU plan [PDF], launched on Monday, says the European Commission wants to develop a roadmap to allow "lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement in 2025" and a technology roadmap to do so by the following year.
"We are working on a roadmap now, and we will look at what is technically also possible," said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president of the EC for tech sovereignty, security and democracy. "The problem is now that our law enforcement, they have been losing ground on criminals because our police investigators, they don't have access to data," she added.
"Of course, we want to protect the privacy and cyber security at the same time; and that's why we have said here that now we have to prepare a technical roadmap to watch for that, but it's something that we can't tolerate, that we can't take care of the security because we don't have tools to work in this digital world."
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She claimed that in "85 percent" of police cases, law enforcement couldn't access the data it needed. The proposal is to amend the existing Cybersecurity Act to allow these changes. You can watch the response below.
According to the document, the EC will set up a Security Research & Innovation Campus at its Joint Research Centre in 2026 to, somehow, work out the technical details. Since it's impossible to backdoor encryption in a way that can't be potentially exploited by others, it seems a very odd move to make if security's your goal.
Proton may roll away from the Swiss
The EC's not alone in proposing changes to privacy - new laws outlined in Switzerland could force privacy-focused groups such as Proton out of the country.
Under today's laws, police can obtain data from services like Proton if they can get a court order for some crimes. But under the proposed laws a court order would not be required and that means Proton would leave the country, said cofounder Andy Yen.
"Swiss surveillance would be significantly stricter than in the US and the EU, and Switzerland would lose its competitiveness as a business location," Proton's cofounder told Swiss title Der Bund. "We feel compelled to leave Switzerland if the partial revision of the surveillance law planned by the Federal Council comes into force."
China, Russia, and the US certainly would spend a huge amount of time and money to find the backdoor. Even American law enforcement has given up on the cause of backdooring, although the UK still seems to be wedded to the idea.
In the meantime, for critical infrastructure (and presumably government communications), the EC wants to deploy quantum cryptography across the state. They want to get this in place by 2030 at the latest.
Other goals are beefing up the abilities of Europol to handle crime on a transnational basis, but also to counter Russia and other interference in EU affairs. Additionally, cloud and datacenter security will be bolstered to deal with outside threats and the Commission wants to look at the whole supply chain to make sure the continent isn't dependent on a single outside supplier of key technologies.
"Safety is one of the key prerequisites for open, vibrant societies and a flourishing economy," said Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President.
"That's why we are launching today an important initiative to better tackle security threats like terrorism, organized crime, surging cybercrime and attacks against our critical infrastructure. We will strengthen Europol and give law enforcement up-to-date tools to fight crime. But also researchers, businesses and even citizens can contribute to greater safety for all." ®
