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Encryption

Europol Chief Says Big Tech Has 'Responsibility' To Unlock Encrypted Messages (ft.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Technology giants must do more to co-operate with law enforcement on encryption or they risk threatening European democracy, according to the head of Europol, as the agency gears up to renew pressure on companies at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. From a report: Catherine De Bolle told the Financial Times she will meet Big Tech groups in the Swiss mountain resort to discuss the matter, claiming that companies had a "social responsibility" to give the police access to encrypted messages that are used by criminals to remain anonymous. "Anonymity is not a fundamental right," said the EU law enforcement agency's executive director.

"When we have a search warrant and we are in front of a house and the door is locked, and you know that the criminal is inside of the house, the population will not accept that you cannot enter." In a digital environment, the police needed to be able to decode these messages to fight crime, she added. "You will not be able to enforce democracy [without it]."

Europol Chief Says Big Tech Has 'Responsibility' To Unlock Encrypted Messages More | Reply

Europol Chief Says Big Tech Has 'Responsibility' To Unlock Encrypted Messages

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  • well if apple does something for china they better do the same in the EU and USA if ordered by an court

  • Doesn't Europol have a responsibility to solve cold cases?

    What, that's not possible? Sounds like a them problem.

    "Enforce democracy". These people are so evil.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      If they genuinely want to "enforce democracy" then I'd suggest they need to start with the sociopathic wannabe absolute monarchs, autocrats, and oligarchs that sleeze their way into positions of power and responsibiity and, once they get there, do all they can to do an end run around it to ensure they stay there at the expense of everyone else.

      Lord Acton as dead on when he said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exerci

  • And here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by locofungus ( 179280 ) on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:15AM (#65103095)

    They will never learn.

    The US telecoms US required backdoor has now been totally and utterly compromised by hostile foreign state actors and the US is talking about years to regain full control and kick them all out.

    This is something that was supposed to be only accessible to the security services.

    Do people really think it's not going to happen again?

    • Re:And here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)

      by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:45AM (#65103153) Journal
      Indeed. Every time one of these folks trot out how they "need" to be able to decrypt criminals' messages, I trot out this handy video from CGP Grey [youtube.com]. To whit:

      "Forced weakness, even with the best of intentions, places everyone in danger. The nature of a keyhole is to be cracked, and the nature of the Internet is to bring demons to the door. No matter how much we might wish it, there is no way to build a digital lock that only angels can open and demons cannot. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics, or less of an angel than they appear."

      That video is eight years old, and still manages to succinctly hit the nail on the head.
  • Anonymity is not a fundamental right, no, it's an absolute right, which has been routinely upheld as something you can't violate. Big Tech has to let law enforcement forcible digitally molest innocent people because some people do bad things? When would that logic ever hold up in court? Keep in mind, what they're talking about is removing any form of privacy, across the board, not just WhatsApp or Telegram, any place or form security / privacy could take, will be completely violated.

    Granted, we're alr
    • Oh FFS, I like being anonymous as much as anyone else. But, if a service is no longer anonymous the people that don't like it will just find another method to communicate, even a non-criminal such as yourself.

      I would say we are at the point that anything on a shared networked service can't be anonymous anymore simply because past behavior shows it will be abused. Don't use it expecting anonymity. Don't like it? Use another method to be 'free', because the smarter 'bad guys' already have.
      • Let's be clear, I fully suggest, and support, moving tools and platforms, if not developing your own. Just because Big Tech has to violate you, doesn't mean you need to side with “Big Tech”. Even if you do what to use "Big Tech", picking smart platforms is an important step, picking ProtonMail instead of GMail, as an example, or using LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office.

      • Re:Anonymity is not a fundamental right? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:43AM (#65103147)

        We never had anonymity, but we did have privacy. They are looking to take away our privacy and they're calling it anonymity to make it seem scary.

        Cops can get warrants and tap endpoints. Being able to decrypt everything is only necessary to spy on everyone, always.

    • Re:Anonymity is not a fundamental right? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday January 20, 2025 @12:03PM (#65103201)

      Anonymity is not a fundamental right, no, it's an absolute right, which has been routinely upheld as something you can't violate. Big Tech has to let law enforcement forcible digitally molest innocent people because some people do bad things? When would that logic ever hold up in court? Keep in mind, what they're talking about is removing any form of privacy, across the board, not just WhatsApp or Telegram, any place or form security / privacy could take, will be completely violated. Granted, we're already violated constantly. For kids to go to school, parents have to sign away any form of digital respect, decency, or moral / ethical functioning. When you go to work, lube up for Daddy Microsoft because he's going in regardless whether you're dry or not. Uncles Google, Amazon, and Facebook aren't any better. Instead of Europol wanting more violation, why not aim for more privacy? I guess because Grandpa Government, wants the last deep thrust and bust?

      I think at some point we have to accept the fact that government agencies view *EVERYONE* as already guilty. There are no innocent parties. The assumption is, if you want privacy of any kind, you *ARE* doing something wrong. This is why policing forces and government folks constantly prattle on about the *need* for backdoors. Privacy is for criminal intent in their minds. They don't understand why anyone wouldn't want all communications to be open and public if they aren't doing anything wrong. Or at least that's the persona they are projection when they scream about needing backdoors into every form of communication.

      I suppose it's only a matter of time before they say we are legally required to have always on mics and cameras in every room in our home. I mean, if we're doing nothing wrong, why wouldn't we?

  • We can only save democracy by killing freedom! (Score:4, Informative)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:34AM (#65103127)

    Democracy as we know it will cease to exist. Our governments, supposedly democratically elected, will see to it. They keep claiming that the *ONLY* way to save democracy is by eliminating freedom. Freedom is apparently the enemy of democracy. And I'm sorry, but encryption can *NOT* have a back door. Any back door is an instant security hole through the encryption, and we've seen time and again that the back doors *WILL* be used by actors outside the government goon squads demanding access to all communication, even "secure" communication.

    This call for backdoors into secure communication always ends up being a security hole through which actual enemy actors access the communications. Why do these government good squads think they should have carte blanche access to the entire universe of information? Do we want to preemptively plant bugs in every private residence as well? I mean, people could be talking about actions against the government. Like voting for the opposition.

    • I know that democracy existed only in ancient Greece and it was based on heavy inequality between people with vote and slaves/women/etc. So you can be happy that there's no real democracy nowadays. But fight vs encryption is doomed unless you find that P=NP.

    • Freedom is apparently the enemy of democracy.

      Similarly, unregulated "free" markets lead to monopolies. So it's a paradox, like this one. [wikipedia.org]

      But optimal freedom doesn't require decryption when you can instead infiltrate crime networks, like we used to do before somebody got the idea to install encryption backdoors.

      • Freedom is apparently the enemy of democracy.

        Similarly, unregulated "free" markets lead to monopolies. So it's a paradox, like this one. [wikipedia.org]

        But optimal freedom doesn't require decryption when you can instead infiltrate crime networks, like we used to do before somebody got the idea to install encryption backdoors.

        Settle down, now. That sounds suspiciously like policework. And as we all know, police forces are no longer interested in the "work" part of the job. Technology exists to do that part for them.

  • I'm actually fine with this as long as it also applies to financial institutions, governments and the military.

    What's that? They're all exempt? Why, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

  • Enforce Democracy?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:49AM (#65103161) Journal

    Declaring a need to "enforce democracy" is fundamentally flawed.

    It's been studied by all kinds of academics, it isn't possible to impose democracy on people who don't or won't choose it.

    Democracy is, rather tautologically, something chosen by the people. Democracy in the US looks different from democracy in Japan, or Israel, or Germany, because the people choose to abide by different rules. Democracy only works as long as sufficient people are willing to abide by those rules. It is impossible to have independence and self-determination forced on you, that's the exact opposite of what they are and how they work.

    Instead of trying to declare that provable mathematics needs to bend to fit political whims, far better to teach people how to behave broadly and allow people to govern themselves. If a criminals actions can completely be hidden by their own encryption, I'd question just how much harm they are doing. Victims will have plenty of other evidence, the scars of the crime, that can be tied to the criminals. It's certainly easier for law enforcement if they can peek at all hidden secrets, but that isn't possible.

    Liberty is the mother not the daughter of order. Is liberty only possible if order is first established by force or does order arise best from an atmosphere of liberty, from free people developing their own interpersonal agreements, arrangements, and accommodations to starve off disorder? -- Benjamin Tucker, 1885

  • Big tech is eventually going to comply, because they have too much to lose. It will happen.

    People need to stop relying on "big" tech, and IMHO one really import thing they can/should do is free themselves from having to rely on big tech's software repositories. The two highest-profile examples of that are the Apple and Google app stores for their mobile OSes. (But desktop Linux users, you might have noticed how your situation eerily resembles the centralized distribution commonly used by mobile users.)

    Nobod

  • They forget there is more than one government in the world and all of them are absolutely evil... The excuse of forcing the law even seems to fall flat these days, sorry, but even criminals get elected now (not just in America) and the people must accept it. If governments were not evil maybe they could earn some trust. I am not even secretive about my data, continue spying, I don't care. However, can you imagine a Boeing whistleblower used an .... wait they're all dead. What about a Russian oligarch who sa

    • As Apple has shown, you can compartmentalize.

      Just because they let the CCP decrypt the backups for any Chinese iPhone (without ADP, but no one in China should turn that on without an explicit CCP command to do so) does little to backups for iPhones from other nations.

  • Legislate, don't bully. Most companies and consumers don't really give a shit about E2EE, but they can't just let Apple slurp up everyone who does. Apple won't be bullied and everyone will be forced to copy them to somewhat compete.

    Unlike pretty much everyone I'm ambivalent about allowing E2EE in commercial chat services, obviously wire tapping needs to be better protected than they protect it for GSM. Equally obviously, Apple and Google can already MitM anything through their update mechanisms and that abi

  • They want laws to outlaw private conversations and if they had tried it in the past would have been laughed right out of the room.

  • Anonymity IS a fundamental right and it has to be that way. The nature of encryption is such that you cannot weaken it without giving rogue nations and criminals total unfettered access to the entire banking system, commerce, healthcare, and critical infastructure such as energy supplies and the water supply.

    That's just how it us, and there's no way to avoid it. Your choice us a simple one - either allow people to be anonymous, or provide North Korean hacker groups like Lazarus unrestricted control over eve

  • Does nobody study history at all here. The idea that any app provides you with secure communication on your mobile phone is complete fantasy. They have the capability. It's their secret. They will not use the information directly, but they will use the information to catch you.

  • "When we have a search warrant and we are in front of a house and the door is locked, and you know that the criminal is inside of the house, the population will not accept that you cannot enter." In a digital environment, the police needed to be able to decode these messages to fight crime, she added. "You will not be able to enforce democracy [without it]."

    You are incorrect. You will be able to fight crime without it. All it actually means is that you haven't taught your citizens mathematics. If a cr

  • Two people, one former NSA boss and one former FBI boss, made quite identical statements. "We would love to read all encrypted messages by evildoeers, that would be really beneficial. We would also hate it if evildoers could read all the encrypted messages by ordinary citizens, CEOs, military, politicians and so on. "

    "The damage from criminals and spies reading encrypted messages would be much bigger than the benefiit from us reading their encrypted messages".

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