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Resist censorship. Reject surveillance. Reclaim your voice.

Stay informed on censorship, cancel culture, and surveillance, and learn how to take your digital rights back.

EU Agencies Propose Encryption Backdoors and Cryptocurrency Surveillance

The EU's proposals dangerously undermine citizens' privacy and security.

If youโ€™re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

The EU is attacking encryption again, this time in a report put together by several agencies, including EU law enforcement Europol, and the European Councilโ€™s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator.

This EUโ€™s site says that this โ€œfirst report on encryptionโ€ โ€“ by what the bloc calls its Innovation Hub for Internal Security, is looking for ways to โ€œuphold citizensโ€™ privacy while enabling criminal investigation and prosecution.โ€

โ€œThe main challenge is to design solutions that would allow at the same time a lawful and targeted access to communications and that guarantees that a high level of cybersecurity, data protection and privacy,โ€ says the report.

The objective answer to the supposed conundrum of how to achieve both goals is always the same: you canโ€™t.

Yet the EU, various governments, and international organizations continue to push to undermine online encryption and keep framing their initiatives the same way โ€“ as both their supposed care for privacy (and importantly, security), and making law enforcementโ€™s job much easier (saying that the goal is to โ€œenableโ€ that, suggests thereโ€™s no other way to investigate, which is not true.)

And, how on Earth the EU intends to โ€œsafeguard fundamental rightsโ€ (of citizens) while at the same time proposing what it does in this document, is anybodyโ€™s guess. But EU bureaucrats are โ€œsafeโ€ from being asked these questions โ€“ at least not by legacy, corporate media.

The reportโ€™s proposals include a number of ways to break encryption, mention encryption backdoors (the sneaky euphemism is, โ€œlawful accessโ€ to communications and data), as well as password cracking and cryptocurrency and other forms of surveillance.

The not-so-subtle abuse of language and tone continues while discrediting encryption, as services like Metaโ€™s Messenger, Apple Private Relay, and Rich Communication Systems (RCS) protocol are dubbed, โ€œwarrant-proof encryption technologies.โ€

One idea regards extracting encryption keys via โ€œquantum side-channel attacksโ€ (that exploit information leaked from quantum computers). โ€œGroverโ€™s algorithm could be used in this case to identify relevant data extracted during a side-channel attack in order to deduct the cryptographic key,โ€ reads the report.

And if DNS encryption is implemented, then the EU thinks it will be โ€œcrucialโ€ to let โ€œlaw enforcement access and process suspectsโ€™ DNS traffic.โ€

The EU pins hopes for its encryption-breaking future powers on AI development, but also, in the present, on the Cybercrime Judicial Monitor (CJM) report stating that some of the blocโ€™s members at the national level have recently been changing legislation in a way that โ€œmight offer additional opportunities to capture and use (encrypted) data.โ€

In fact, the CJM annual report leads the EU to conclude that โ€œthe majority of EU member states have direct or indirect capabilities for targeted lawful access to suspectโ€™s device.โ€

Once again, โ€œthe issueโ€ of intercepting voice calls made using foreign SIM cards is brought up in the โ€œLawful interception in 5G networksโ€ sectionโ€ โ€“ similar to Europolโ€™s recent exploration of breaking mobile roaming encryption.

If youโ€™re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

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Resist censorship. Reject surveillance. Reclaim your voice.

Stay informed on censorship, cancel culture, and surveillance, and learn how to take your digital rights back.

Logo with a red shield enclosing a stylized globe and three red arrows pointing upward to the right, next to the text 'RECLAIM THE NET' with 'RECLAIM' in gray and 'THE NET' in red

Resist censorship. Reject surveillance. Reclaim your voice.

Stay informed on censorship, cancel culture, and surveillance, and learn how to take your digital rights back.