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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.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:22PM
I'd like to see Microsoft tell France to shove it, and their fines too, and remotely disable all their government IT systems running on Windows when France complains. Microsoft is being way too nice.
These governments were all dumb enough to make themselves dependent on MS for all their computing systems, so why they think they can now tell that company how to run those systems, I have no idea. Never make yourself completely dependent on someone you don't trust.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @12:02AM
True. Governments should not be using proprietary software at all; they should be using Free Software. That way, they are not dependent upon a company and can hire whoever they please to work on the software if need be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @06:49AM