Germany Says “Hell, No” To EU Proposal To Outlaw Encryption

Last month, we noted that there was a new protect the children" bill that was proposed in the EU that would effectively outlaw encryption, while simultaneously require full internet scanning of basically all activity.

As we noted in our post, it was still early in the process, and now the German government has stepped up to say that this proposed regulation is a terrible idea and would devastate basic human rights. That's exactly right.

The German government in the past weeks repeatedly slammed the bill as an attack on privacy and fundamental rights, with its digital minister Volker Wissing warning this week that the draft law crosses a line."

In response, the EU Commissioner who is championing the proposal tried to insist that the proposal is much more narrow than people are making it out to be, but that's wrong. It's based on the faulty assumption that you can magically keep end-to-end encryption while simultaneously be able to scan messaging communications for certain content. That's not possible.

Hopefully that puts a quick end to this proposal, but I fear it will keep popping up quite a bit over the next few years.