EU Parliament wants to protect end-to-end encryption

European governments might be stalled

European governments that think they can stop terrorism by weakening end-to-end encryption might find their efforts stalled by the European Union.

The civil liberties committee of the European Parliament has released a draft proposal which is in direct contrast to the efforts by the US, British and German governments to introduce regulations or weaken encryption.

The draft recommends a regulation that will enforce end-to-end encryption on all communications to protect European Union citizens’ fundamental privacy rights.

The committee has recommended a ban on backdoors. Article 7 of the E.U.’s Charter of Fundamental Rights says that EU citizens have a right to personal privacy, as well as privacy in their family life and at home. According to the EP Committee, the privacy of communications between individuals is also an important dimension of this right.

This will mean that there will be some conflict here between what the European Parliament institutional bodies may want and what some member states do.

However, if this proposal for the new Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications passes, it should significantly increase the privacy of EU citizens’ communications, and it won’t be so easy to roll back the changes to add backdoors in the future.