Spain Seeks Ban On End-To-End Encryption. What Does It Mean For WhatsApp And Others

Seems like trouble is brewing for Meta-owned WhatsApp in Spain as the country is advocating a ban on end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

Most among the 20 EU nations are in favour of "some form of scanning of encrypted messages". Representative image.

Source : Getty

Seems like trouble is brewing for Meta-owned WhatsApp and other instant messaging apps in Spain as the country is advocating a ban on end-to-end encryption (E2EE), media reports say. Spain is batting to end encryption for hundreds of millions of people within the European Union (EU) show leaked documents, says a report by Wired.

A few other EU member states have also supported proposals to scan private messages for illegal content. As per the document, a European Council survey of member countries’ views on encryption regulation, offered officials’ behind-the-scenes opinions on how to craft a highly controversial law to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in Europe.

The proposed law would require tech companies to scan their platforms, including users’ private messages, to find illegal material. However, the proposal from Ylva Johansson, the EU commissioner in charge of home affairs, has drawn ire from cryptographers, technologists, and privacy advocates for its potential impact on end-to-end encryption, the Wired report added.

Among the 20 EU nations represented in the document leaked, most are in favour of "some form of scanning of encrypted messages" and Spain is at the top. “Ideally, in our view, it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption,” Spanish representatives were quoted as saying in the document.

What is end-to-end encryption?

End-to-end encryption or E2EE essentially lets only the sender and receiver of messages see their contents. This prevents all parties, right from scammers to police officials and even the company providing the digital platform from viewing the content of the messages. If they try to view the messages, they would appear scrambled and unreadable.

Messaging apps Signal, Pavel Durov's Telegram and Meta-owned WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption in some portions of their app. Signal among the three does not collect data and uses only your phone number and is fully open-source while Telegram is only partially open-source and uses name, phone number, user ID and contacts data. WhatsApp on the other hand uses data linked to the user and is not open-source, except for the encryption.