Defending Encryption in the U.S. and Abroad: 2024 in Review

EFF supporters get that strong encryption is tied to one of our most basic rights: the right to have a private conversation. In the digital world, privacy is impossible without strong encryption. 

That’s why we’ve always got an eye out for attacks on encryption. This year, we pushed back—successfully—against anti-encryption laws proposed in the U.S., the U.K. and the E.U. And we had a stark reminder of just how dangerous backdoor access to our communications can be. 

U.S. Bills Pushing Mass File-Scanning Fail To Advance

The U.S. Senate’s EARN IT Bill is a wrongheaded proposal that would push companies away from using encryption and towards scanning our messages and photos. There’s no reason to enact such a proposal, which technical experts agree would turn our phones into bugs in our pockets. 

We were disappointed when EARN IT was voted out of committee last year, even though several senators did make clear they wanted to see additional changes before they support the bill. Since then, however, the bill has gone nowhere. That’s because so many people, including more than 100,000 EFF supporters, have voiced their opposition. 

People increasingly understand that encryption is vital to our security and privacy. And when politicians demand that tech companies install dangerous scanning software whether users like it or not, it’s clear to us all that they are attacking encryption, no matter how much obfuscation takes place. 

EFF has long encouraged companies to adopt policies that support encryption, privacy and security by default. When companies do the right thing, EFF supporters will side with them. EFF and other privacy advocates pushed Meta for years to make end-to-end encryption the default option in Messenger. When Meta implemented the change, they were sued by Nevada’s Attorney General. EFF This article has been indexed from Deeplinks