Part of the reason why people end up trusting messaging services such as WhatsApp in spite of the fact that it is owned by Facebook, a company that isn’t well known for caring about things like the privacy of its users, is because of the fact that it has end to end encryption. WhatsApp competitors such as Signal also offer this kind of encryption, and as a result of the fact that this is the case you can rest assured that nobody would ever be able to read the messages that you send since they would be encrypted in a highly untraceable manner.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that European legislators appear to be trying to work towards getting rid of this encryption, or at the very least making it so that they would have a means of cracking through it if they need to investigate someone or the other. A big part of the reason what that is the case has to do with the fact that the continent has seen a surge in terrorist attacks recently with eight people having been killed by terrorists in three separate countries in the past couple of months alone.
While it is understandable that a government that is facing a terrorism crisis would want to eliminate any potential channels of communications that would allow terrorists to communicate privately and secretly, at the same time a lot of people are criticizing this as an assault on user privacy. User privacy is the sort of thing that has ended up becoming rather sacred as the internet has become an intrinsic part of our day to day lives, and a government trying to compromise it will never be seen as a good thing.
Some are also criticizing this as an attempt to make it easier for governments to conduct surveillance on whoever they choose, something that a lot of people are weary of since it is a pretty slippery slope that can lead to a lot of terrible situations.
H/T: Politico.
Read next: Google is planning to enforce upgraded privacy standards for Chrome extensions soon
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that European legislators appear to be trying to work towards getting rid of this encryption, or at the very least making it so that they would have a means of cracking through it if they need to investigate someone or the other. A big part of the reason what that is the case has to do with the fact that the continent has seen a surge in terrorist attacks recently with eight people having been killed by terrorists in three separate countries in the past couple of months alone.
While it is understandable that a government that is facing a terrorism crisis would want to eliminate any potential channels of communications that would allow terrorists to communicate privately and secretly, at the same time a lot of people are criticizing this as an assault on user privacy. User privacy is the sort of thing that has ended up becoming rather sacred as the internet has become an intrinsic part of our day to day lives, and a government trying to compromise it will never be seen as a good thing.
Some are also criticizing this as an attempt to make it easier for governments to conduct surveillance on whoever they choose, something that a lot of people are weary of since it is a pretty slippery slope that can lead to a lot of terrible situations.
H/T: Politico.
Read next: Google is planning to enforce upgraded privacy standards for Chrome extensions soon
