The planned declaration of the EU Council of Ministers on “Security through encryption and security despite encryption”, with which the member states want to demand the aid of service providers such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Threema, Signal or WhatsApp for decryption, is making waves . Representatives from science, business and politics are storming the project. They see data protection and security on the Internet and other digital applications being completely undermined.

The Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI), for example, demands the German EU – Council Presidency, the Commission and Parliament to “vehemently oppose” the attempt to weaken end-to-end encryption. The initiative not only jeopardizes the informational self-determination of the citizens, but also the protection of company and business secrets, warned GI President Hannes Federrath. The federal government must reflect on its position, according to which it does not pursue a “targeted weakening or regulation of encryption techniques”. , warned Federrath. “The basic right to encryption is important for our democracy – just as postal secrecy was in the analog world.” Secret communication can neither be effectively prevented with a master key nor with a ban on encryption. Criminals could switch to unobservable communication with steganography, for example. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) explicitly obliges the use of cryptographic solutions.

IT systems are protected Encryption has become “one massive problem developed for the investigative authorities, “says the Federal Association for IT Security (TeleTrusT). In principle, however, it helps “to adequately protect the values ​​on our IT systems and thus to go into the digital future safely and trustworthily”. Hollowing out encryption means “endangering the already sluggish digitization in the EU,” says Karsten from the chairmanship of the association. It is important to promote trust in IT, not to diminish it.

According to Bartels, solutions with back doors cannot “be viewed as ‘state of the art’ will”. Master keys “massively damaged the liberal constitutional state”. If large numbers of duplicate keys fell into the wrong hands, this could lead to a catastrophe.

“Encryption is – if not to say the most important – instrument for secure communication on the Internet”, emphasizes Klaus Landefeld from the board of the eco-Verband der Internetwirtschaft. The planned deep intervention counteracts IT security, manipulates the existing complex software systems of the operators of messenger services and is “out of all proportion to the as yet unproven benefits in the fight against crime and terrorism”. There was a threat of wide gateways for “uncontrolled access by countless consumers and secret services from home and abroad to communication between EU citizens” Stephan Dreyer from the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research knows that the paper that the federal government has drawn up repeatedly speaks of a balance between security interests and fundamental rights. The reference to the “cooperation” with the providers indicates, however, “that the initiative may aim at creating back doors or holding master keys on the platform”. Any form of the systematic possibility of decryption would mean “that by definition there was no encryption at all from the start”. A bit encrypted, “there is no such thing.”

The debate that has been going on for years is a “high-level topic” because it “is primarily about protecting life and limb”, explains Dennis-Kenji Kipker from the Bremen Institute for Information Law. It is difficult to understand, however, that individual tragic incidents – such as the recent attack in Vienna – are repeatedly singled out “in order to make security-policy projects capable of reaching a consensus”. This quickly turns into a “one-sided security rhetoric” that does not necessarily lead to a constitutional law.

Death of the digital secret of letters For Thilo Weichert from the network data protection expertise, the obligation to provide access for security authorities including secret services would mean that technical self-protection would no longer be possible. Nobody can guarantee “that the decryption would only be used under the rule of law”. Digital fundamental rights threatened to “become total loss”. The Federal Data Protection Officer Ulrich Kelber tweeted that he had “always spoken out vehemently against backdoors”. But he first had to take a closer look at the specific paper.

Anyone who sacrifices secure encryption in order to be able to eavesdrop “opens the door to mass spying by foreign secret services and also hacker attacks”, emphasized the MEP Patrick Breyer from the Pirate Party. “The security of all of our communications must have priority. That has been the clear position of the European Parliament since 2017.” His FDP colleague Moritz Körner made a similar statement: “A ban on encryption would be a terrorist attack on civil rights in the EU and would make all private communication unsafe.” Terrorists would immediately use alternative routes, the citizens would be defenseless, the digital secret of letters would be dead.

(emw)