By Saffiyah Khalique
Your commercial awareness dose
Last week the European Commission revealed its new Counter-Terrorism Agenda. Amnesty International outline concerns over the new approach will have on freedom of expression, surveillance and potential biases.
This new agenda includes creating a network of financial investigators to following financing trails of terrorist groups, border management changes, and the gathering of information on fighters from places such as Syria and Iraq on their movements to and from the EU states. The aim of this is so Europol can receive alerts on these movements in real-time.
Perhaps the most concerning clause are the obtaining of encrypted information. The Commission say they will work with the Member States to “identify possible, legal, operational and technical solutions for lawful accesses and promote an approach which both maintains the effectiveness of encryption in protecting privacy and security of communications while providing an effective response to crime and terrorism.”
The applications which could be affected by these new moves include WhatsApp, Signal and Facebook Messenger, all of which use end-to-end encryption to provide its users with extra privacy. Typically, if a government agency tried to intercept communications the messages are unreadable because the only device that can decode the messages are the sender and receiver. This makes work difficult for authorities to monitor criminal activities.
The EU is taking a ‘back-door’ approach, where a third party works with the consent of the encryption provider. However, this wording does not ease concerns about the EU’s moves to gain access to encrypted data. Does this mean access to all encrypted data of citizens? Or is it just targeted encryption of those perceived to be a threat? Yet even then there are worries about who this perceived threat is.
Ray Walsh, a researcher for privacy education side ProPrivacy told CNBC, that this approach is impossible: “No matter whether you chose to call a purposefully developed secondary access point a ‘front-door’ or a backdoor, the result is the elimination of data ownership and access control which inevitably results in a fundamental vulnerability.”
Walsh emphasises the concerns this would have on the ordinary citizen saying that: “If this kind of legislation came to pass it would be hugely detrimental to the general public.” Further stating that this approach by the EU does not necessarily mean that criminals will not find other ways to communicate, such as through the dark web or other encryption methods.
Furthermore, human rights groups have similar own concerns. Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office speaks on this matter stating: “The premise of this proposal is flawed. It falsely posits that more surveillance and more restrictions on our freedom of expression are the prices we have to pay for our safety.”
Geddie emphasises that these technologies are not neutral highlighting that the tech is not free from racial profiling. She notes that like many counter-terrorism measures this will have a discriminatory effect on Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.
The arguments made by Walsh and Geddie leave the question, why should we have to give up more of our freedom of expression and be subjected to increased surveillance if terrorists can just find other means to communicate? The ability to communicate privately and as freely as possible is a fundamental human right, and by the governments taking a stronger surveillance approach. There could be a risk of self-censorship as states could potentially use the technology to target dissenters and activists. The EU must be monitored as it begins to solidify its new counter-terrorism laws to make sure that their citizens’ rights to privacy are not sacrificed for potential national security threats.
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