Experts "deeply concerned" by the EU plan to weaken encryption

Date:
Tue, 27 May 2025 16:21:35 +0000

Description:
ProtectEU keeps raising concerns among tech experts as the Global Encryption Alliance now urges the European Commission to protect strong encryption.

FULL STORY

The EU plan to create a legal backdoor into encrypted communications keeps raising concerns.

This time, 89 signatories coming from the tech industry including civil society organizations, some of the best VPN and email providers, and cybersecurity experts are warning against the privacy and security dangers
of the Technology Roadmap on encryption included in the ProtectEU strategy.

In a joint letter published on Monday, May 26, 2025, experts are now urging
the European Commission to "reframe its approach" and protect strong
encryption practices.

The need for strong encryption

"While we recognize the importance of elevating security efforts during
moments of increased geopolitical instability, we are concerned by the
framing of the technology roadmap," experts wrote.

Encryption , the scrambling of data into an unreadable form to prevent unwanted access, is the backbone of how services like Signal, WhatsApp, and Proton Mail work. Yet, law enforcement has long argued that this technology
is an obstacle to criminal investigations.

As cyberattack incidents keep rising worldwide, though, even government
bodies, like the FBI and CISA in the US, have started to encourage citizens
to swicth to end-to-end encrypted services to fight back these threats.

The European Commission itself previously acknowledged encryption as needed
to protect the integrity of cyberspace, too.

This is why, for the signatories, who include the likes of Proton, Surfshark
, Tuta Mail , Mozilla, and Element, alongside leading cryptographers and digital rights groups, this technology remains a "key cybersecurity tool"
that cannot be compromised.

"Undermining encryption weakens the very foundation of secure communications and systems, leaving individuals, businesses, and public institutions more vulnerable to attacks," they wrote.

ProtectEU comes as the first step in the EU Commission's plan to bolster the security of the European bloc in the years to come. While we don't know much
at the time of writing, we do know the strategy includes finding a technical way to create encryption backdoors into software. That's exactly what most worries the tech benches.

They wrote: "We are deeply concerned by the Commissions continued focus on identifying ways to weaken or circumvent encryption. This undermines its own security objectives under the ProtectEU strategy."

The European Commission has already tried to weaken encryption with its proposal to scan all citizens' communications to halt the spread of child sexual material, in fact. Deemed by critics as Chat Control , the bill has
been failing to attract the needed majority since 2022.

Along the way, the European Court of Human Rights even ruled " illegal break encryption ," a hard blow for the supporters of client-side scanning technologies to monitor encrypted communications. Did you know? (Image
credit: Vlad Yushinov/via Getty Images) While messaging apps and email providers are set to be the main target of lawmakers, an EU expert group explicitly recently referred to VPN services as "key challenges" to the investigative work of law enforcement agencies for the very first time, alongside encrypted devices, apps, and new communications operators.

Now, experts believe that what lawmakers aim to do under the ProtectEU
strategy will lead to the same security, human rights, and accountability issues.

They then urge to reframe the Technology Roadmap on Encryption by taking into consideration also the industry concerns, not only those of law enforcement.

"Any future roadmap that aspires to be credible and balanced must consider
the feasibility of any potential technological capabilities and their
societal, technical, and legal impact," they conclude.

This is the second time digital rights and tech experts have gotten together
to call on the European Commission not to undermine encryption with the new ProtectEU plan since April 1, 2025, the day the plan was first unveiled. Also on that occasion, experts urged lawmakers to make them an active part of the process.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/experts-deeply-concerned-by -the-eu-plan-to-weaken-encryption

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