The defenders of digital privacy kept encryption in France last week, once again, since parliamentarians finally rejected a controversial disposition to create a back door for the police.
The infamous article 8 of the proposed The drug trafficking law, which is currently going to the country’s National Assembly, would have required all encrypted messaging applications and insurance email services to decipher user data at the request of an authority.
The decision to preserve the privacy and safety of people is undoubtedly a victory for the technology industry. However, “we must continue fighting for privacy and continue raising our voices, as long as there are still politicians who try to break the encryption,” he told Techradar that Tuta Mail’s press officer, Hanna Bozakov.
The dangers of an encryption back door
Previously approved by the Senate, the bill destined to “free France from drug trafficking trap” occurred as an attempt to create a strong framework to investigate this type of crimes.
As mentioned above, requiring the installation of rear encryption doors in protonmail, signal and whatsapp has He attracted strong criticisms inside and outside political banks.
The encryption refers to the fighting data in an illegible form to avoid the access of third parties. End -to -end encryption is the reiteration that messaging applications and secure email services, among other tools such as the best VPN today, are used to protect the data in transit by maintaining it private between the sender and the receiver, from the end to the end.
However, as cryptographers and other experts have argued, it is not possible to create an encryption back door that only good boys can explode.
When commenting on the French case, the CEO of Tuta Mail, Matthias PFAU, said: “A rear door for good for the good is a dangerous illusion. The encryption of weakening for the application of the law inevitably creates vulnerabilities that they can, and will be, be exploited by cybercriminals and hostile foreign actors.”
Know?
In 2016, France also rejected an amendment to its Digital Republic Law that requires the creation of an encryption back door. The provision was introduced as an attempt to fight terrorism, but the Digital Minister of France considered it “vulnerability” for design “at that time, the registry reported.
As the global encryption coalition warned in an open letter published on March 4, a rear door would also have weakened the application of French messenger forgetting, which was officially certified by the country’s cyber security agency and recommended to French ministers and government officials.
Taking into account the salt of the salt typhoon in the USA.
The National Assembly finally listened to industry concerns and scraped the requirement of the encryption back door in the bill on March 6.
However, despite generalized criticisms, France Interior Minister Bruno Retilleau confirmed his support for the disposition of the encryption back door as a need to guarantee “maximum efficiency” in the combination of organized crimes, Le Monde reported.
When commenting on this point, Bozakov of Tuta Mail told Techradar: “I am worried that politicians still do not understand anything about cybersecurity, although there are huge foreign threats at this time aimed at our societies mainly from Russia and China.”
Not only France
France’s attempt to undermine the encryption may have stopped once more. However, the country is not only when pressing to choose the blockade of encrypted communications to facilitate criminal investigations.
Sweden is also considering spending a similar requirement for the tastes of Signal, WhatsApp and Imessage. If you succeed, the new rules could go into force since March 2026.
Side client scan is just an encryption back door but with an elegant name
Romain Digneaux, Proton
These plans have already attracted strong criticisms of the technology industry, with the president of the signal, Meredith Whittaker, reiterating that the signal would prefer to leave the country than to undermine its encryption protections.
On February 21, 2025, Apple was even forced to kill its end -to -end encryption function of ICLOUD in the United Kingdom after a government order to create a rear encryption door.
Since 2022, the EU has also been trying to approve its chat control proposal to scan the private communications of citizens, including encrypted messages, to stop the propagation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
As Romain Digneaux, Proton Public Policies Manager (the provider behind Proton VPN and Proton Mail), he points out, while these efforts are nothing new and tend to fail (as in the case of France), they constantly return.
“What we see is police creativity to try to boost the same old concept with new names, and that is worrying,” Digneaux told Techradar.
“The side client scan is a clear example of that. That is just a back door of encryption but with an elegant name. Something that sounds more technical and more acceptable for people who do not necessarily understand how technology works.”
