EU Institutions At Odds Over Privacy
The European Data Protection Board stands strong on privacy, while Commission, Parliament, and the Council seek to undermine the confidentiality of communications.
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) held its 46th plenary session this week. The EDPB Chair, Andrea Jelinek said:
“The ePrivacy Regulation must not — under no circumstances [sic] — lower the level of protection offered by the current ePrivacy Directive, and should complement the GDPR by providing additional strong guarantees for confidentiality and protection of all types of electronic communication.”
There’s a very different mood in the European Parliament, which recently voted overwhelmingly in favour the Commission’s controversial proposed ePrivacy derogation:
https://twitter.com/echo_pbreyer/status/1370642492899667968
The “chat control” law (as the European Pirate Party is calling it) is a proposed temporary derogation to the ePrivacy Directive that would oblige email and messaging platforms to scan all communications and report suspected child sexual abuse material to law enforcement authorities.
This legislation should be taken together with the Council’s proposed ePrivacy Regulation, published in February, which would permit the processing of (pseudonymised) communications metadata for law enforcement purposes.
In a statement on Tuesday, the EPDB showed clear disapproval of any watering down of rights in the ePrivacy Regulation:
Any possible attempt to weaken encryption, even for purposes such as national security would completely devoid those protection mechanisms due to their possible
unlawful use. Encryption must remain standardized, strong and efficient
Writing for Lawfare, Theodore Christakis and Kenneth Propp explained how France has been pushing for broad national security exemptions in the ePrivacy Regulation, allegedly to avoid complying with the October Court of Justice of the European Union judgements in Privacy International and LQDN.
Are these proposals compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights? If not, we could see the EU’s lawmaking institutions pitted against the CJEU, with the EDPB shaking its fist in the background.
