No middle ground: Moving on from the crypto wars

The ‘second crypto war’ is in full swing. European governments need to stop trying to defeat encryption and get more sophisticated themselves instead.

Summary of key points:

+ Accepting a middle ground or finding a balanced solution on the issue of encryption is neither feasible nor, in fact, desirable.
+ Privacy advocates and security researchers are destined to win the fight on stronger encryption and against key escrow, but they will lose the war on security – and most likely fragment along those fault lines in the not-so-distant future.
+ In Europe, no single vision on how to tackle the challenges created by the rise of encryption currently exists on the political level.
+ Law enforcement agencies in Europe view encryption as one among many other inter-related issues that are undermining their future role.
+ From a European intelligence agency perspective, accepting the degradation and denial of intelligence collection efforts is an unacceptable solution to the encryption problem.
+ A targeted approach, through the build-up arsenals of exploits, is the only alternative to backdoors, key escrow, and obliging companies to weaken encryption.

German Institute for International and Security Affairs: SWP Comments No.47, November 2017: The EU’s Revised Cybersecurity Strategy: Half-Hearted Progress on Far-Reaching Challenges http://www.europeansources.info/record/the-eus-revised-cybersecurity-strategy-half-hearted-progress-on-far-reaching-challenges/

European Commission / EEAS: JOIN (2017) 450 final (13.09.17): Communication ... Resilience, Deterrence and Defence: Building strong cybersecurity for the EU http://www.europeansources.info/record/resilience-deterrence-and-defence-building-strong-cybersecurity-for-the-eu/

EP: EPRS: What Think Tanks Are Thinking, 27.04.18: Cyber-security http://www.europeansources.info/showDoc?ID=1235518

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