How We Fought an Anti Encryption Law in Belgium - and Won!
DannyB writes:
How we fought an anti encryption law in Belgium - and won!
The Belgian government has removed 'backdoor requirement' from new law after international protest.
In June 2021, the Belgian government proposed a draft law called "Law on the collection and storage of identification, traffic and location data in the electronic communications sector and their access by the authorities", or short, "the Data Retention Legislation". This draft included a passage that would have forced companies such as WhatsApp and Signal to decrypt their encrypted chats upon request by the authorities for criminal investigation.
This law would have been the worst in Europe, worse than the Snoopers' Charter in the UK or the EARN IT bill in the USA.
[...] the Belgian government did not have to wait long for the public outcry: Belgian intellectuals like Professor Bart Preneel said that "by putting a backdoor into Whatsapp, you would make it less safe for everyone".
The main criticism was that it is simply impossible to rule out that a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. A lowering of the security level would immediately affect all users - and not just those who are the subject of a judicial investigation.
[...] The public outcry against the Belgian draft law was so strong that politicians within the government itself changed their course. Finally, the proposed passage that would have forced companies to decrypt encrypted data upon request by the authorities got removed from the draft law.
At the Federal Council of Ministers last Friday, the government approved a reworked version of the law, in which the backdoor requirement was dropped entirely.
A government mandated back door will always and should always be less popular than a central government registry of passwords and encryption keys. For your protection. In case you forget.
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