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In this episode of The Gate 15 Interview, Andy Jabbour talks with Sharon Polsky and Hanna Bozakov in the first of a two-part series on encryption. All three participants are members of the Global Encryption Coalition.
- Sharon Polsky. Sharon joins us from Canada. She is president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, and has most recently testified at Parliamentary and Senate committees, and spoke the 2023 IGF in Kyoto. A brief bio is available here. Sharon on LinkedIn.
- Hanna Bozakov. Hanna joins us from Germany. Hanna is with Tuta Mail, the encrypted email service from Germany, formerly Tutanota. Together with Tuta, she fights for our right to privacy and freedom of speech. Hanna on LinkedIn.
In the discussion Sharon, Hanna and Andy discuss:
- Encryption 101: What it is and why is it important.
- The Global Encryption Coalition and why they’re involved.
- Law Enforcement & legislation in Canada, Europe and broadly.
- Best privacy practices for individuals and organizations.
- Recommendations for law enforcement and legislators.
- Three Questions!
- And more.
“There is no way to implement such proposals in the context of end-to-end encrypted communications without fundamentally undermining encryption and creating a dangerous vulnerability in core infrastructure that would have global implications well beyond Europe”
Meredith Whittaker, President, Signal, in a public blog post, 17 Jun 2024, in response to controversial European Union legislative proposal to scan the private messages of citizens in a bid to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
“Politicians must understand that the magic key for law enforcement to unlock encrypted data will never exist. There are too many examples in history that show how vulnerabilities that should have been only known to law enforcement got exploited by Chinese hackers, by Russian state hackers. So yes, criminals use encryption to hide their criminal activities but this does not justify outlawing encryption for everyone. If we do this the Internet as a whole will become so insecure… if you want to live in free and open democracies – not in a Stasi like country where everything is monitored – we must accept there is no easy solution. Our freedom requires privacy and thus encryption. So one thing is for sure – encryption must remain secure, otherwise the bad actors will have already won.”
Hanna Bozakov, Tuta Mail, in our interview, 18 Jun 2024
Selected links:
- Global Encryption Coalition. The Global Encryption Coalition (GEC) was founded in 2020 by the Center for Democracy & Technology, Global Partners Digital and the Internet Society and now has over 350 members. Its mission is to promote and defend encryption in key countries and multilateral fora where it is under threat. The GEC also supports efforts by companies to offer encrypted services to their users.
- GEC members
- The Road to Digital Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, 15 May 2024
- Europol: European Police Chiefs call for industry and governments to take action against end-to-end encryption roll-out, 21 Apr 2024
- Europol: Equilibrium between security and privacy: new report on encryption, 10 Jun 2024
- TechCrunch: Stop playing games with online security, Signal president warns EU lawmakers, 17 Jun 2024
- Thanks for the great interview, it has been a pleasure. As for links, this is the blog post about the German right to encryption which might be interesting:
- Tuta Mail: German government publishes law to guarantee ‘right to encryption.’ 25 Mar 2024
- ASIS: Legal Report: Weakening Encryption Would Threaten Right to Privacy, European Court Rules, 22 May 2024
- Tuta Mail. “Tuta is the world’s most secure email service, easy to use and private by design. You get fully encrypted calendars and contacts with all our personal and business email accounts. Secure, green and ad-free. Email to feel good about.”
- Some of the organizations Sharon is involved in:
- President — AMINAcorp.ca
- President — Privacy and Access Council of Canada
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