CYBERCRIME : THIRD REPORT OF THE OBSERVATORY FUNCTION ON ENCRYPTION
People in the EU are becoming increasingly worried about security online, as well as about rising exposure to hate speech, other abusive and criminal behaviour, and use of encryption as a weapon in the form of #ransomware. Law enforcement continue to argue that important parts of the #digital world are « going dark », and there is a need for reliable and sufficiently rapid and scalable ways to access plaintext (decrypted data and messages).
This 3rd report of the Observatory Function on encryption builds on previous reports and looks at the relevant technical and legislative developments, re-visiting some topics, which deserved further consideration. In the interim between this and previous reports, there have only been a few developments in European Union (EU) Member States' national legal regimes to incorporate new provisions that tackle the challenge of encryption in criminal investigations. These new approaches can be categorised into two distinct parts: one deals with tools that directly tackle encryption and the others category provides for tools to gain access to content before it is encrypted, or after it is decrypted and bypass encryption altogether. This is further underpinned by jurisprudence that exemplifies the use of the provisions mentioned. Insights are shared on encryption in the context of cross-border cases. #europe #informatique
