SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Europe's privacy body has reiterated its pro-privacy, anti-backdoor stance.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli has long expressed the view that “privacy versus security” is a false dichotomy. In 2015, he told a conference in Brussels that “the objective of cyber-security may be misused to justify measures which weaken protection of [data protection] rights”.

He's now issued a much longer dissertation on the topic, the Preliminary EDPS Opinion on the review of the ePrivacy Directive, here (PDF).

The ePrivacy framework needs to be extended, the opinion states, it needs to be clarified, and it needs better enforcement.

The document also says the emergence of new services since the directive was first issued means it needs a thorough update. For example, Buttarelli's document states that there's a danger that new services erode privacy protections even though they're “functionally equivalent” to existing services.

For example, he writes, VoIP services should afford users the same privacy protection as traditional phone services, as should mobile messaging apps.

Likewise, he highlights the risk that the Internet of Things erodes privacy because the directive doesn't pay enough attention to machine-to-machine communications.

On encryption, Buttarelli is unequivocal:

The prohibition on backdoors would be universal, the EDPS writes: encryption providers, communication service providers, and “all other organisations (at all levels of the supply chain)” should be prohibited from “allowing or facilitating” backdoors.

Original Submission