Germany Talking about Banning End-to-End Encryption
Der Spiegel is reporting that the German Ministry for Internal Affairs is planning to require all Internet message services to provide plaintext messages on demand, basically outlawing strong end-to-end encryption. Anyone not complying will be blocked, although the article doesn’t say how. (Cory Doctorow has previously explained why this would be impossible.)
The article is in German, and I would appreciate additional information from those who can speak the language.
EDITED TO ADD (6/2): Slashdot thread. This seems to be nothing more than political grandstanding: see this post from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Chris • May 24, 2019 9:06 AM
The article mentions EU initiative to prevent the 5G cellphone standard to incorprate end-to-end encryption, which is unlikely to happen anyway. However, this seems to be unrelated to the IM end-to-end encryption mentioned in the article headline. heise.de article does not mention 5G at all:
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Angriff-auf-WhatsApp-Co-Seehofer-will-Messenger-zur-Entschluesselung-zwingen-4431634.html
In my opinion, Minister Horst Seehofer who recently lost 90% of his power and is clinging to his position is trying create some headlines and to establish himself as a populist hard liner. Same with his comments about immigration. I would not give too much about this. As I said, this is only my opinion.