ENISA and Europol issue a join statement on encryption

In a joint statement on ‘lawful criminal investigation that respect 21st century data protection’, Europol and the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) talk about the ‘encryption dilemma’, and note that, when it comes to law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications, ‘the focus should be on getting access to the communication or information, not on breaking the protection mechanism’. The two agencies underline the fact that, although mandatory backdoor or other measures aimed to weaken encryption would ‘increase the attack surface for malicious abuse, which, consequently, would have much wider implications for society.’ They also bring into the discussion the principle of proportionality, and note that policy makers and the judiciary could issue ‘clear policy guidance on the proportionality of the online use of privacy-invasive investigative tools’.