CDT Joins Open Letter on Civil Society Views of Defending Privacy While Preventing Criminal Acts
Today, CDT joins a number of other civil society organizations on a letter to the European Commission reminding it to protect fundamental rights including privacy and free expression as it pursues initiatives to address crime, including the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). European Digital Rights (EDRi) spearheaded the effort.
The letter stresses that the signatories share the European Commission’s goal to protect children. Child sexual abuse is a serious crime with extremely serious consequences for victims. All forms of violence against children online and offline must be effectively eliminated. The letter argues that effective measures to achieve that goal may be found outside of technology, ranging from public education and victim support to improved cross-border police cooperation.
Among other things, the letter calls on the Commission to reject recommendations in a “Technical Solutions” paper submitted to the Commission to help it form a policy response to the spread of CSAM communications services encrypted end-to-end. It points out that short-listed “solutions” giving law enforcement officials exceptional access to encrypted content are fundamentally at odds with the essential feature of end-to-end encryption, which is that only the sender and the recipient can access the content.
British Public Oppose Secret Surveillance Powers and Want Strong Protections for Encrypted Communications
CDT released nationally representative polling data revealing that a the British public are broadly concerned about the security, privacy, and free speech consequences of allowing law enforcement to access encrypted communications.
Responding to the EU-US Negotiations on Reciprocal Data Exchanges for Border Procedures
CDT Europe, together with 29 other civil society organisations and academics, sent an open joint letter to the Council of the EU regarding the worrying direction taken by the European Commission in the EU-US border negotiations with the U.S. government.
Open Joint Letter on a Public Reassessment of the EU-US Adequacy Decision
On 29 June, the US Supreme Court ruled that US President Trump can remove the leaders of independent agencies and commissions, overturning nearly 90 years of precedent limiting executive power. This decision raises serious questions about one of the key safeguards underpinning the EU-US Data Privacy Framework adopted in 2023: independent supervision.
Return of Mass Scanning of Private Communications through Undemocratic Procedure
CDT Europe responds to the European Parliament's vote to revive the interim derogation from the ePrivacy Directive, commonly known as “Chat Control 1.0”, which provides the legal basis for the voluntary, indiscriminate scanning of private communications for known and new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and for the solicitation of children.
