Representatives of the European Commission have emphasized in the context of an online webinar of the Internet Society entitled “The Future of Encryption in the European Union” that neither a ban on encryption nor a weakening of encryption standards will be a goal of the EU . Instead, it is about access to encrypted communication for law enforcement officers in a few cases, and a data protection-friendly technical way can certainly be found for this. Belief in such a “magical solution” has continuously revived the crypto discussion, commented one participant on the virtual discussion.

Cathrin Bauer-Bulst, Head of Unit Law Enforcement, Security and Cybercrime at the European Commission and Paul Nemitz, former Commission Director for Fundamental Rights and Rule of Law and now Chief Advisor in the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, recognize the importance of encryption. In the discussion of the Internet Society, they also demanded that the prosecutors can do their jobs.

Magic is feasible “Of course, encryption should not be made a scapegoat, but it should not be seen as a panacea for all of our problems. We should understand illegal data access as a problem of our own, for which we cannot rely solely on encryption,” said Bauer-Bulst and pointed out that neither the interim solution for combating child abuse nor the draft E-Evidence ordinances contain requirements with regard to encryption Representations work and called for an open debate. At the same time he trusts the “creativity” of the engineers. “The fact that there is currently no technical solution does not give us the right to make our life easy and to call out ‘encryption ban’ or ‘back door’ immediately with every practical solution,” said Nemitz. Bauer-Bulst demanded, differentiate between the different types and levels of encryption, from transport encryption to hardware encryption.

Backdoors That it The interior ministers of the EU, who want to launch the legislative initiative for extraordinary access to encrypted communication next week and not at all about backdoors, are wrong, said Jean-Christophe Le Toquin, coordinator of Encryption Europe, an association of medium-sized companies in Security: Le Toquin referred to a statement by the French interior minister, who explicitly named a back door as a desired means, but said that this would not be open, but behind closed doors between the French government and the providers.

The EU Commission and the interior ministers of the member states also have to prepare for massive opposition to a crypto regulation in parliament. The Danish leftist Karen Melchior and the Dutch liberal Sophie In ‘t Veld, both members of the Renew Europe faction in the European Parliament, sharply criticized the Commission representatives.

In’ t Veld recalled the countless illegal scandals Access by authorities, such as ethnic profiling by the tax authorities in the Netherlands. Melchior called on the Commission officials to comply with their legal duties and to enforce the ban on general data retention.

Security with vulnerabilities Beyond the illegal data access by the data-hungry authorities, Melchior stated soberly that she understood the call for a balance of interests, but she saw no “magical” solution. “I understand it this way, either we have encryption that works, end to end. Or we have encryption that does not work and is therefore not secure.” Criminals would know what to do, warned Melchior. Suffering from new loopholes in the Security is the general public of the citizens.

Klaus Landefeld, Director of Infrastructure and Networks at the Eco Association, sees it that way. A list of the desires for access to data stored by providers shows the dilemma, he said. In the EU alone, around 13. 000 Set such access exceptions. Even if only a part of these authorities could also benefit from the extraordinary access to encrypted data, the number of authorized persons would probably be in the hundreds. How the loss of weak points, interfaces and diverted data is to be ensured remains unexplained : “A secret that hundreds of organizations un d know their employees is no longer a secret. ”

(olb)