“The fight is over, our boys won.” Steven Levy quotes James Bidzos in his book on the “code rebels”. With these words the former manager of RSA Data Security, which specializes in encryption solutions, came on stage in the year 2000 at the opening of the RSA conference he founded in San Francisco. For Bidzos and Levy there was no doubt at the time: The “Cypherpunks” had been able to prevail against the US government in the first Crypto War and thus “save privacy”.

What is missing: In the rapid world of technology, there is often time to rearrange the many news and backgrounds. At the weekend we want to take it, follow the side paths away from the current, try out other perspectives and make nuances audible.

War over encryption not ended But the war for secure encryption in the digital age is far from over. It flares up again and again with new nuances, even if all the core arguments have long been exchanged. The main problem: There can be no “balanced” compromise in this dispute, as politicians are otherwise so keen to strive for. Because if you give up IT security and data protection in order to gain a little more public security, you will lose both in the end.

It is one of the recurring zombie disputes about fundamental rights as with data retention, in which constant dripping should hollow the stone. Currently, the public discussion in Europe has increased significantly in sharpness, as is shown by many exchanges of blows.

Prevent “unlawful access” No one in the EU Commission intends to ban encryption or weaken. No back doors should be built into cryptographically secured products. This was last confirmed by representatives of the Brussels government institution on Thursday during an online exchange on the “future of encryption in the EU” organized by the Internet Society (ISOC).

“The Commission is a strong advocate of strong encryption, “emphasized Cathrin Bauer-Bulst, Head of Unit at the General Directorate for Domestic Policy. The technology is important to prevent “unlawful access” to personal information. The big but inevitably followed, however: criminals also use encryption to carry out their deeds, the cybercrime expert pointed out. EU law enforcement officers have stated that 75 percent of their cases are affected.

Equivalent to the apartment search “in digital space” For Bauer-Bulst it is clear: A “lawful one.” Investigators must have access to the data they need. There needs to be an adequate equivalent in digital space to the ability of law enforcement officers to search an apartment with a court order. Metadata about the location of a user or about the device and browser used by them also provided important clues for law enforcement officers. However, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has repeatedly made it clear that it can be used to create sensitive profiles and that similar protection applies to this field as to content data.

Paul Nemitz made a very similar statement, Chief Adviser to the Commission’s Directorate-General for Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. According to him, the police always had the opportunity to read letters or listen to a telephone conversation “in real time” in the event of a case. Similar to data retention, where the ECJ has just put its previous line into perspective, it is therefore important to achieve a “practical concordance”.