At the request of technological companies, European proposals scanned the content of communications sent through encrypted e -mail and reporting services, are “existential catastrophic risk”, and was approved last night.
Encrypted messaging service SignalWhich is widely used by governments, enterprises and the public to send safe messaging services, warned that the adoption of new legislation “denies the goal of encryption.”
The European Council must vote according to Danish offers on October 14 to oblige services by e -mail and messaging for installing machine learning and scanning technology on mobile phones and computers to identify and reports on suspicion of abuse of child abuse.
The states of the Member of the European Union (EU) are divided into a scheme called Chat Control, which was widely criticized by cryptographers and security researchers, which claim that the mandatory scan will create security vulnerability, which can be used by hacker and hostile national states.
The vice president of the signal for global affairs Udbhav Tivar said that if the proposals become law, they will introduce “massive obvious vulnerability” into operating systems used on phones and computers.
“Absouring actors will begin to use this opportunity to gain access, which would be simply unthinkable for them in accordance with the current paradigms of safety of how operating systems were implemented,” he said.
In accordance with Danish offers, technological companies will have to introduce scanning technologies on the client side that will use hash functions to identify well-known images of abuse and machine learning algorithms to identify unknown images. One of the ways to ensure compliance with the need to demand that the software development companies introduce the possibilities of scanning in widely used operating systems such as Windows, MacOS Apple and iOS and Google Android.
Safety vulnerability
Tivari, speaking in Online discassiumHe said that law enforcement and reconnaissance agencies in Europe insisted that state devices be exempted from mandatory scanning to protect the security of government data from security vulnerabilities.
“You can imagine if the intelligence agency wants to make sure that its servers and services do not have this technology, the general director of the multi-billion dollar company probably does not want its set C to be exposed to the same risks,” he added.
Critics say that the chat control will be expensive to implement, as this would require that the EU countries unfold thousands of law enforcement officers to manually revise images that were defined as suspicious when scanning algorithms that tend to create false positive or false negatives.
The proposals will probably face legal problems, if they are accepted, said Asha AllenGeneral Secretary of the Center for Democracy and Technology of Europe.
She said that their own lawyers in the European Council raised reservations about the legality of proposals.
For example, the European Court of Human Rights found that in the case Podchasov v Russia These are attempts to weaken the encryption or creation of “backdors” are in violation of rights to the inviolability of private life.
The proposals for control in the chat “by nature are disproportionate”, since they “require scanning of private messages and the content of users who have no accusations, suspicions or violations against them,” Allen said.
They can also violate the general rules for protecting data protection that require people to give their “informed consent” before their personal messages are scanned.
Those who refuse will not have full access to encrypted messages of messaging or postal services, in what Allen said, which means “forced consent” and violation of the data protection law.
Critics say that in the end, Europe must be made illegal to people to use methods that can go on scanning on the client’s side, if measures become law, for example, by illegally changing operating systems containing software on the client’s side and prohibit the use of virtual private networks.
Tivari said that criminals and bad actors will find ways to circumvent chat control, but people who want to use encryption for legal purposes will lose their confidentiality.
Leading computer and security experts warned in a scientific article that the Apple’s abandoned plans for the introduction of scanning on the client’s side in 2021 were inoperators, underwent abuses from criminals and the threat of security and security.
EU -member states are divided into proposals for chat control, from 12 in favor, including France, Denmark and Spain. The Netherlands, Finland and Poland are among the six countries against. Eight unresolved states include Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Greece.
