Is the end nigh for end-to-end encryption? | Encryption | The Guardian

[jim bell]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/02/is-the-end-nigh-for-end-to-end-for-encryption-whatsapp

"The passage of GDPR (general data protection regulation) might seem like ancient history – as does everything before 2020 – but in legislative terms it was a mere blink of an eye ago and now the European Union has moved on to the next big thing. Prepare to start hearing a lot about the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

"It’s one of two bills currently going through the EU’s institutions, alongside the confusingly similar Digital Services Act (DSA). As a rough split, the DSA is about the things that platforms host: it covers issues such as child sexual abuse imagery, content moderation and algorithmic curation.

The DMA, by contrast, is more about what the platforms do. It sets up a new legal definition of large tech platforms as “gatekeepers” – companies that provide a certain set of services to at least 45 million EU-based users or 10,000 business users – and loads them with a host of requirements intended to ensure that industries of the future can compete on a level playing field with the dominant companies of the present.

And, oh boy, have those requirements proved controversial. The final version of the text, agreed by the European parliament and council last month, limits the ability of gatekeepers to combine personal data from various sources for the purposes of targeted advertising. It requires companies (read: Apple and Google) to allow users to freely choose their browser, virtual assistants or search engines. It mandates those same companies to open up their platforms to third-party app stores. And, most controversially of all, it requires the largest messaging platforms to become “interoperable”.

“The largest messaging services will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms, if they so request,” the European parliament explains. “Users of small or big platforms would then be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls across messaging apps, thus giving them more choice.”


 The security industry has warned that it could spell doom for services such as WhatsApp
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