EU's ProtectEU Strategy Signals New Push for Encryption Backdoors
The European Commission's internal security plan includes vague language about "lawful access to encrypted data," reigniting concerns about weakening end-to-end encryption.
What to know
- The EU Commission's ProtectEU strategy uses euphemistic language—'lawful access' and 'technological solutions'—that critics interpret as blueprints for encryption backdoors framed as law enforcement tools.
- Technologists and privacy advocates warn backdoors weaken security for all users, including against the hostile states and criminals the strategy claims to address.
- The EU Parliament overwhelmingly rejected a similar backdoor proposal (CSAR, November 2023), but the Commission's structural power to repackage and reintroduce failed ideas raises concerns of persistent legislative pressure.
- The timing coincides with unresolved AI safety challenges, leading some commenters to argue that intentional security weakening is now negligent rather than merely problematic.
The dispute Whether ProtectEU explicitly proposes encryption backdoors or merely hints at them through euphemistic language—commenters split on whether the inference is justified or speculative. · positions read across 194 posts and comments
The Commission will eventually succeed in mandating backdoors despite parliamentary opposition, due to structural imbalances and persistent repackaging.
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“So the EU will eventually require backdoors in encryption. It's only a question of how many tries it takes...”
bradley13 · Hacker News
Backdoors are especially dangerous now given unresolved AI safety risks and the current security landscape.
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“With all the current concerns about rogue and mis-aligned AI, and about how we've made essentially zero progress on making sure that AI is safe and trustworthy, NOW you want to put backdoors in encryption algorithms?”
jbstack · Hacker News
The article's inference of backdoor intent from ProtectEU is not yet proven; the actual text should be examined before concluding.
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“Is the actual text of the workplan somewhere? The linked article refers to the text 'more effective tools for law enforcement' in the press release and then infers or implies that this means more encryption backdoors, but I could not find…”
microtonal · Hacker News
Privacy weakening poses democratic and sovereignty risks, especially in a fragmented Europe vulnerable to authoritarian capture.
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“And, of course, no thought is given to the implications this could have in conjunction with the next Orban. Europe is aligning against Russia as a threat, while at the same time shooting itself in the foot by disabling basic rights like…”
random3 · Hacker News
“The EU is once again looking for a way to undermine end-to-end encryption in the name of strengthening law enforcement capabilities, this time via a new strategy, ProtectEU.”
Reclaim the Net (article) · Reclaim the Net
European Commission Policy proposerEU Parliament Legislative body
The record 1 articles and posts · last 30 days
What people are saying 24 voices from 1 site · best of 194 · verbatim
- What is the actual text of the ProtectEU workplan, and does it explicitly mention encryption backdoors or only euphemistic language?
- How many times has the EU Commission attempted to legislate encryption backdoors or mandatory chat content screening in formal votes?
- What are the technical mechanisms the EU is considering for 'lawful access' to encrypted data without compromising overall security?
- Sep 1
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A red herring is a bait planted specifically to derail a conversation. I will make an example to demonstrate this in a setting which is less loaded. Beware that all analogies are flawed in essence, so a direct transfer to our conversation will be difficult, especially since I am trying to be blatant. But since I want to answer your question of…
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The EU has never been a democratic entity, As a French, I still remember the so-called "2005 French European Constitution referendum (Do you approve the bill authorising the ratification of the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe?)55% of voters voted no despite the constant propaganda on TV nudging people to vote yes.In 2007, the new…
- Aug 31
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The UK was one of the largest members of the EU, and as such had a substantial say over it's direction and policies; and as the EU is a major economic power, consequently that is power in the world as well.That is, it's government had this, as an "inside the room" participant. Power is often exercised by that means; in fact one definition of power…
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> Turn on the TV or read a newspaper to see how much crime ...Amazingly on TV in Europe (watching 3 countries) I see how many women are killed by their partners (nicely born here), how politicians are (occasionally, mostly rarely) arrested for building mobster like organizations, how large enterprises (own by locals) avoid paying taxes.The poor…
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> To be honest immigration happened forever because people look for a better place to live. The able, hard working and entrepreneurial ones bring a lot to the countries they immigrate to. So, I do not see immigration as "a problem".You allow onky the highly skilled ones who cannot reach their potential from where they come from.> Additionally…
- Aug 30
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>Especially if member States doesn't increase budgets for handling said immigrantsYou don't need more budget for migrants, but less budgets for migrants, removing the welfare incentive so they stop coming.Just be Like Singapore. They don't have a migration problem. It is really that simple. Stop funding NGOs that treat your welfare state like a…
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>To be honest immigration happened forever because people look for a better place to live.I'd also want to go to SV, California, NY, Portland, etc as a better place to live, yet I need to do it legally, which I can't because of how hard getting a US work visa is, so I won't. Migration to the EU should be the same. Only accept people with a legal…
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In practice it is. The whole idea of technocracy comes with a bunch of levers you can easily exploit with a bit of power and money (not just external corporations or donors, but internal like intelligence agencies). As long as you make an appearance of following the process of evidence being collected and experts being involved. And there is never…
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EU is less of a dictatorship and more of a technocracy. Where they rely heavily on experts to define policy rather than a democratic system. As you said:> Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games InitiativeThe experts they choose can just be anyone with a bit of…
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Far-right mostly uses migrants as an easy scapegoats for any problem. In many countries I have seen migrants taken advantage of (worse work condition, employers not paying taxes, no healthcare provided, children have worse education, no insurance, etc).I wouldn't even mind if they would be honest about what they claim (being nationalist), but I…
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> But that could have been prevented if the EU did not have an open-doors migration policy to start with. And to have listened to the people on other issues too.I believe there are more nuances to this, then simply blaming it on immigration policies. There are a lot of variables in place for why far right movements are and have been on the rise in…
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The US has CLOUD Act, it has a backdoor in almost every data center on Earth. Because:"The CLOUD Act allows United States authorities to request data from cloud providers and other covered service providers regardless of where the data is physically stored. The act is not limited to companies based in the United States. It applies to "all…
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> The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators.As much as I hate the political leaning of the Commission, this is complete bullshit.The commission is named by the member states' head, with the head of the commission and the individual commissioners' nomination…
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There was opposition in parliament, though. It was only passed because they snuck it in while MPs had left for summer vacation, and the parliamentary rules are absolutely pants-on-head idiotic and default to passing proposed legislation if a majority of all MPs do not vote it down (rather than merely the ones present). In other words, they passed…
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It's not that, it's calling the EU a dictatorship, meanwhile the US has genuinely slipped out of the liberal democracy rankings to a electoral democracy (the same as Hungary last year) and seems to be on the path to full blown oligarchy. There is genuine concern here about this bill but it's not the elephant in the room. The EU hasn't threatened…
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This is from 2025. I don't know why someone has seen fit to repost it again in 2026.... I'm guessing they didn't look at the date.And lots of people here are spouting FUD.In the ensuing period, the EU took expert advice later in 2025, and as they say in an update a few months later in June 2025[1]: The High-Level Group recommended taking a…
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This is true. However there's a potential way to fix it, and it would only take one member state, no matter how small to start the landslide. And it's basically the same thing that happened to the US Senate.The Senate, like the Council of Ministers, was intended to represent the member states. Originally, Senators were appointed by state…
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The problem is that we keep on voting in politicians (left and right) that do not fight for freedom and privacy. The EC in the end is only an extension of national governments (through the European Council) and the European Parliament (in the sense that they propose and vote for EC members).There are parties that truly care about these values, but…
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> So the EU will eventually require backdoors in encryption. It's only a question of how many tries it takes...So how many tries (i.e. EU parliamentary votes on an actual legislative text brought in by commission) has there been for encryption backdoors or mandatory screening of chat content?There has actually been only one, the November 2023 vote…
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The lawful way for law enforcement to enter a home is to get a search warrant (or whatever the EU equivalent is) and show it to the owner, who then lets them in because that's what the law requires. No need for law enforcement to even worry about the lock. If the owner doesn't let them in when they have a search warrant, they're violating the law…
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> with far right trying to turn people against EU.The far right does not need to do that, the EU is doing it itself just fine.Secondly this push like the one for Chat Control comes from the commission itself and as far as I can tell the far right has not taken over the commission so what you are saying makes no sense.> now EU is fascist.Chat…
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FWIW, iMessage is largely unencrypted already. Yes, the messages themselves are E2E encrypted, but most people do not enable Advanced Data Protection, but do enable iCloud Backups, which causes messages only to be encrypted at-rest with keys that Apple holds [1]. And even if you enable ADP, most people that you communicate with didn't.A similar…
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No that is not what they are doing.This is the same thing they tried to do with Chat Control v2, that is to force providers to access data before it is encrypted and store it in case one day someone becomes a criminal.You should look up all the past posts on HN on this very topic.The end goal is to track and collect everything and/or make it…
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And, of course, no thought is given to the implications this could have in conjunction with the next Orban. Europe is aligning against Russia as a threat, while at the same time shooting itself in the foot by disabling basic rights like privacy with absolutely no memory of how much more basic lack of privacy (enabled by Facebook) was leveraged…