EFA joins global call for governments to support encryption

Several Australian organisations including Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) have joined signatories in more than 35 countries in calling on world leaders to reject any law that would undermine strong encryption.

Individuals and organisations have signed an open letter encouraging world governments to reject any laws, policies or practices that seek to limit access to or undermine encryption and other secure communications tools on the grounds that this would threaten digital security.

Governments in countries including the UK, France, India, China and the US are considering legislation and related proposals that would undermine strong encryption, the letter states.

These include proposals that would require companies to provide backdoor access to secure communications and encrypted files for surveillance purposes.

But safety and privacy online depend on secure communications technologies, and such technologies are threatened by these policies, it adds.

“Calls to undermine encryption in the name of ‘national security’ are fundamentally misguided and dangerous. Encryption is a necessary and critical tool enabling individual privacy, a free media, online commerce and the operations of organisations of all types, including of course government agencies,” EFA Executive Officer Jon Lawrence said.

“Undermining encryption therefore represents a serious threat to national security in its own right, as well as threatening basic human rights and the enormous economic and social benefits that the digital revolution has brought for people across the globe.”

Besides EFA, other Australian signatories to the open letter include the Australian Privacy Foundation, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, BluePrint for Free Speech and FutureWise.

Image courtesy of Yuri Samoilov under CC