Thursday, August 25, 2016

France and Germany want to intercept Whatsapp – Swedish Dagbladet

France and Germany want their police officers to be able to intercept Whatsapp and other encrypted communications. Photo: AP

Since revelations that the US intelligence agency NSA had wiretapped phones and data traffic throughout the world, as more and more Internet and telecom operators gone over to offering services that encrypt the contents of the call.

the encryption makes it difficult for outsiders – such as industrial spies or jealous former boyfriends and girlfriends, but also police and intelligence – to hacking and eavesdropping between users.

Popular messaging services such as Skype and the Facebook-owned mobile service WhatsApp, to name a few, encrypts the content of their services.

Even members in the terrorist organizations that IS can now communicate encrypted and so far relatively undisturbed over their smartphones and computers. According to EU police cooperation agency Europol as the encryption police and intelligence biggest problem in the detection of terrorist threats.

In several countries, including Sweden, have for IS attacks in Europe in terms of the ability to legislate on police will be able to intercept even encrypted content. This may involve forcing telecom operators to open a kind of electronic “back door” into the encrypted chat room to the police, or simply forward the so-called encryption keys to the police.

Germany and France which are both affected by new terrorist attacks over the summer, in a shopping center in Munich and on the boardwalk in Nice, now proposes that the EU is forcing telecom and Internet operators to unlock the encryption of the police.

“If we had such laws, we would be able to impose obligations on all operators who today do not cooperate at EU level “, said the French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve at a press conference next to his German colleague Thomas de Maizière of the week.

the objections to the proposal are difficult to dismiss. Data Knowledgeable critics, such as the EU’s own security agency ENISA, points out that the kind of back door to encrypted channels that the police want too could be opened and used by hackers to steal sensitive police and myndighetssdata.

American security authorities (the US National Intelligence Council) writes in one of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, strong-encryption is the best defense against both industrial espionage and cyber-attacks from the Russian and Chinese criminal gangs.

Other users of encryption frying journalists who want to protect their sources.

the European Commission has promised to present a concrete legislative proposal regarding encryption in September.

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