The EU’s muddled approach to encryption

The EU would like you to know that it doesn’t want to ban encryption. In fact, it correctly recognises that encryption is absolutely essential for our privacy and financial safety on the internet. That’s why a draft resolution – due to be tabled in front of EU leaders at a pivotal summit later this month – spends paragraphs extolling the virtues of online encryption, before setting out the EU’s complaint: they would really like to be able to read encrypted messages. And they want technology companies to do something about it.

On the surface, the EU’s argument might seem quite reasonable: most of us would generally believe that with warrants or similar safeguards, authorities should be able to read the messages of serious criminals or terrorists. This is an argument successive UK governments have also been fond of making.

The problem is that once you scratch below the surface, legislators are essentially proudly proclaiming themselves to be pro-cake and pro-eating it.