EU Pushes for Backdoors in End-to-End Encryption

The European Commission is pushing for law enforcement backdoors into end-to-end encryption while calling for deeper intelligence sharing and cooperation to strengthen member states’ cyber defenses.

See Also: Securing Your Business Begins with Password Security

In a Monday strategy document dubbed “ProtectEU,” Europe vowed to expand Europol’s role as an operational police agency, mandate regular threat assessments and enhance intelligence-sharing between member states, EU agencies and its central intelligence hub, the Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity.

The strategy lays out plans for a 2025 roadmap on “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and a “technology roadmap on encryption” to explore ways to unlock encrypted data by 2026. It also proposes revising EU data retention rules “as appropriate” and evaluating the impact of law enforcement access to encryption.

“Law enforcement needs the right tools to be effective,” the commission said in a press release. “This includes lawful access to data.”

The strategy is merely the latest government missive to decry end-to-end encryption, a tradition that began in the United States with an ill-fated attempt by the Clinton administration to foist a chipset with a NSA backdoor onto telephone handsets. Technologists have stressed for decades that deliberate weaknesses in encryption algorithms are pathways for hackers as much as they access points for law enforcement agents armed by a warrant. Technology giants say end-to-end encryption is a necessary perquisite for public trust in digital products, since consumers otherwise would likely not trust personal data to insecure devices. The European Court of Human Rights in February 2024 found that end-to-end encryption is essential to preserving the right to privacy in digital communication systems (see: Encryption Vital for Right to Privacy, European Court Rules).

Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president of the European Commission for technology sovereignty, said in a press conference that law enforcement lacks data access in nearly 85% of cases and that police “have been losing ground on criminals because our police investigators, they don’t have access to data.”

“We want to protect the privacy and cybersecurity at the same time,” Virkkunen said, stating that the commission is first developing a technical roadmap to explore what capabilities would be required to equip law enforcement with the tools to access encrypted data.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement the goal of ProtectEU is in part “to strengthen Europol and give law enforcement up-to-date tools to fight crime.”

“Safety is one of the key prerequisites for open, vibrant societies and a flourishing economy,” she added. “That’s why we are launching today an important initiative to better tackle security threats like terrorism, organized crime, surging cybercrime and attacks against our critical infrastructure.”

A growing debate has emerged in recent years over whether major tech firms should comply with law enforcement requests to access encrypted data and messaging platforms. Apple removed end-to-end encryption for British customers of its end-to-end iCloud backup storage following government demands for a backdoor (see: Apple Withdraws Strong Encryption Feature for All UK Users).

Apple later released a statement clarifying that communication services such as iMessage and FaceTime remain encrypted, adding: “We have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”

Signal President Meredith Whittaker vowed in February to protect the encrypted messaging app, adding Sweden to a list of countries that chat app would rather not serve than comply with a government request for law enforcement backdoor.