WhatsApp alternative Signal out of NL if EU adopts policy

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WhatsApp alternative Signal out of NL if EU adopts policy

Messaging app Signal is considering leaving the EU if policy does not change. It does not necessarily refer to the relocation of a head office: the entire app is in danger of disappearing from the EU, and therefore also from the Netherlands. Signal became very popular especially in 2021 after Elon Musk called for it to be used. He did this because Signal handles user privacy differently than, for example, WhatsApp. The EU even advised people to use Signal.

Signal

But now the relationship between the EU and Signal seems to have hit a bumpy road. signal is anxious that a new bill within Europe will ensure that encryption must be less severe. President Meredith Whittaker has said, “If we ultimately have to choose between weakening our encryption or leaving the EU, we will leave.” Clearly. The bill prescribes that all your private messages must be able to be scanned for criminal and criminal offenses.

While it is of course essential that child abuse is detected, this potential legislation violates the end-to-end encryption used by Signal to keep its users’ messages private and protected. That would have to be changed when that law comes into effect, because then the authorities must have access to it. However, according to Signal, there is no gray area. Encryption is either there for everyone and then it works, or it is not there at all and then it actually doesn’t work for everyone.

End to end encryption

Signal is not alone in how it feels about such legislation: the Dutch government does not want end-to-end encryption to be banned either. However, the government does see bread in client-side scanning, which means that messages and images on your phone are scanned before encryption. A nice idea, but not for your privacy: it will still be affected.

The specific bill in question is called the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation and it is putting the world of apps on edge. Doing something against people who abuse children is of course something everyone wants, but whether this should also be at the expense of the privacy of, well, the same everyone, that is something to discuss and that is being done. Signal, but also apps such as WhatsApp (which now also uses end-to-end encryption) also do not like these laws at all, so there is probably a lot of lobbying in Brussels to convince people to find other ways of tracing people who abuse children, instead of everyone being the victim of the criminal behavior of others.

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