Technical experts call on Commissioner Virkkunen for a seat on the table of the European Commission’s Technology Roadmap on encryption

The European Commission announced a Technology Roadmap on encryption

On 1 April, the European Commission published its new Internal Security Strategy, ProtectEU, setting out its plans for the next five years. This included an announcement to prepare a Technology Roadmap on encryption that has raised several questions because of plans to enable law enforcement authorities access to encrypted data.

EDRi in a group of 39 organisations and 43 experts published an open letter today to express concerns and to ask for a seat at the Technology Roadmap table for academics, independent technologists, tech and human rights lawyers and civil society actors specialising in these issues with meaningful participation to ensure a scientific evidence-based approach to encryption.

EU lawmaking needs to be based in evidence and reality

Encryption is an important technology to protect people’s rights and freedoms and an absolute requirement to navigate safely online. Still, plans that could undermine encryption have been at the centre of discussions at EU level, which has received heavy criticism. The proposed roadmap echoes in part a report published last year by the opaque “High Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement”.

Several years of negotiations by policy-makers have not changed the scientific consensus that it is impossible to give law enforcement access to end-to-end encrypted communications without creating vulnerabilities that malicious actors and repressive governments can exploit. The technical truth remains: you cannot switch off end-to-end encryption without serious cybersecurity and human rights issues for all.

Former Commissioner Johansson, at the helm of the controversial Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, did not want to listen to expert advice. Now with Commissioner Virkkunen at helm of the Technical Roadmap, we hope that she will be willing to listen to technical and digital rights community, will ensure seats at the table for public interest technologists and groups specialised in privacy, cybersecurity, and human rights. EU lawmaking needs to be based in evidence and reality, not “magical thinking“.

We are prepared to engage with this exploratory work to safeguard cybersecurity and fundamental rights

We hope Commissioner Virkkunen takes us up on our offer and look forward to meeting with the Commissioner and sharing our expertise to help ensure robust, sustainable, good lawmaking and to safeguard cybersecurity and fundamental rights. On these critical topics and with the current geopolitical situation, it is now more important than ever to have reliable and strong infrastructure that protects us all, safeguards our rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression.