EU terrorism fighter: internet companies must hand over encryption keys

Under certain circumstances, and ‘in line with civil rights’, internet and telecom companies should be able to be forced to hand over their encryption keys. That is what the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator is arguing for.

It seems that the fighter against terrorism, Gilles de Kerchove, is referring to the private encryption keys of users. A number of companies, including WhatsApp, have recently introduced stronger encryption, where the encryption is done between two interlocutors and the service’s servers do not have access to the communication.

“Since the Snowden revelations, internet and telecom companies have begun to offer decentralized encryption,” De Kerchove writes in a document published by Statewatch. “That makes interception by governments technically difficult or complicated,” complains the counter-terrorism officer. Issuing encryption keys would make interception possible again.

The encryption keys to which De Kerchove probably refers are stored locally on the user’s device; to get them out, that capability would have to be built into the app. That would effectively amount to a backdoor, although the counter-terrorist doesn’t use that word.

It is unclear under what conditions governments should have access to the encryption keys, if it is up to De Kerchove. It is also not known how widely his view is shared within the top of the European Union. Earlier, British Prime Minister David Cameron said intelligence services should always be able to access communications, although he later softened his words.