“Hartmann warned against weakening end-to-end encryption through client-based content scanning. “By doing so, the commission is in effect undermining the most important digital protection tool,” the investigator said, “because compromised encryption is not encryption in the end.””
The sharpest objection to the EU’s chat scanning plan came from a senior cybercrime prosecutor, not a privacy activist. Markus Hartmann told the Bundestag the “going dark” scenario is overblown. A Fraunhofer researcher put the false positive rate at 10 to 20 percent, which means millions of innocent messages read by hand. Brussels wants to scan every chat, email and game lobby in Europe, and the cops say they do not need it.