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Dear EU lawmaker,
We all want to be safe and secure.
In democratic societies, communication systems are vital for our lives and connections with others. Safe and secure communications and devices allow me to work, socialise, organise politically, express myself, and connect with communities around me. Encryption is great for protecting the way our messages travel on the internet.
Despite this, our communications, devices and with them our freedom and safety are under threat. We see more and more attacks on encryption, by law enforcement agencies, or Europol. New commercial tools such as spyware are also emerging, and with them a whole unregulated market profiteering from exploiting our devices.
The spyware industry depends on the abuse of software vulnerabilities, a practice that weakens cybersecurity for everyone – including me and you. At least 14 EU Governments have acquired or used spyware. Some private vendors are based in Europe, some outside of Europe. One example is the Pegasus spyware built by the Israeli company NSO. Pegasus was used in the #Catalangate scandal and in other regions of the world to limit political dissent, civic organising and journalists’ voice.
If decision-makers allow the commercial spyware industry to continue unhinged, anyone who can pay enough will be able to target activists, politicians, investors, journalists and any of us, basically. The spyware market, called “zero-day market”, is a systemic threat not only to human rights, but also to cybersecurity, democratic stability, and global safety.
On the other hand, Europol and law enforcement are pushing to legalise hacking methods that weaken encryption. These methods (client-side scanning, key escrows, ghost proposals) rely on ordering a service provider to build vulnerabilities in their systems. With this, state actors want to enable the police or intelligence agencies to break encryption.
The “Chat Control” massive mobilisation was a clear indication that people care about encryption. If we lose encryption, we will also lose trust in anything we do online, risking the security of our democratic society, economy and our human rights. We will all be impacted by the chilling effect of unreliable, unsafe communications: journalists engaging with sources or combating disinformation, lawyers consulting their clients, doctors and therapists supporting their patients, human rights defenders chatting online, youth organising protests, families chatting with each other.
Today, I ask from you: “Protect encryption and ban spyware!”
