Signal boss warns: There is a risk of withdrawal from Europe due to chat control!

Signal boss warns: There is a risk of withdrawal from Europe due to chat control!

The head of the messenger app Signal, Meredith Whittaker, made it clear in a recent interview that her company is threatening to leave the European market. The background is the controversial EU plans for so-called chat control, which could result in a weakening of the end-to-end encryption of messaging services. These proposed regulations require messages to be checked for criminal content before they are encrypted, which Whittaker sees as prohibitive. In their opinion, a backdoor in Signal's encryption is unacceptable as it would jeopardize the integrity of the platform. 5min.at reports that ...

The discussion about chat control has broken out in the European Parliament and the Council of Member States. While the Parliament has spoken out against the measures by a large majority, there is a majority in the Council in favor of chat control, particularly in the Danish Presidency. In this country, there is also a clear tendency in the federal government to protect privacy and anonymity on the Internet, although this is not without controversy. Critics fear that such new regulations could lead to surveillance of private communications. Tagesschau.de reports that ...

The consequences for users and the market

Whittaker not only warns of the consequences of the planned regulations, but also of the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) by companies. It calls on major technology companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to improve the security standards of their systems. In their opinion, there is a risk that AI agents will have too much access to sensitive data, thereby undermining users' trust in secure means of communication. Increased access to such technologies could also result in careless handling of personal data. BMV.de points out that...

A long-term goal of the EU is to create a uniform data protection regulation, which is clearly regulated by, among other things, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive. Nevertheless, protecting personal data and privacy in the digital world remains an immense challenge. The ongoing negotiations over an ePrivacy regulation make it clear that comprehensive regulations are necessary to ensure the confidentiality of communication.

Whittaker also made it clear that if Signal were to withdraw from Europe, it would work with partners and the community to find alternative ways to get around the new rules. This is in the context of the ongoing battle to protect privacy, which is coming under increasing pressure from new technologies and legal regulations.