After Leak, CDT Europe Joins Open Letter of Concern Regarding EU-US Plans for Digital Security

The Centre for Democracy & Technology, Europe (CDT Europe) joined an open letter with other civil society organisations raising strong concerns about the disregard for international human rights standards and the planned attacks against encryption in the leaked notes from the EU-US Senior Officials Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs, held in Stockholm from 16-17 March.

An excerpt from the letter: 

“As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has stated, encryption is a key enabler of privacy and security online and is essential to safeguarding rights including the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of association and peaceful assembly, security, health and non-discrimination. Our long-term engagement in this field tells us that ‘lawful access by design’ could only lead to a systemic weakening of encryption worldwide, making everyone unsafe and vulnerable to unlawful access. Other concerns raised by the document are that ‘data retention and data processing (…) [are] identified as areas of focus’ by the US delegation. The EU has now a rich body of case-law posing clear limits against general and indiscriminate data retention and strict requirements for public authority access to personal data. Any attempt to circumvent these legal obligations would be in violation of people’s fundamental rights.”

Read the full open letter (PDF).