France's 'backdoor for the good guys' could put your data at risk

German email provider Tuta has sounded the alarm over an amendment to a French bill, which requires providers of encrypted communication services to implement a backdoor for intelligence agencies.

According to this amendment of the so-called “Narcotrafic law,” whose intention is to protect France from drug trafficking, developers of encrypted messaging apps are forced to implement “technical measures” that would allow law enforcement authorities to collect and view the content of encrypted communications. In other words, chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp are obligated to build in a backdoor to their platform.

To force chat platforms to hand over decrypted chat messages of suspected criminals, the amendment provides the possibility of implementing a fine. The fine goes as high as €1.5 million for natural persons, or up to 2% the global annual turnover for legal persons.

Tuta calls the amendment “an attack on security and privacy.”

“Encryption is the foundation of secure digital communication. It is what keeps our data and ourselves protected in today’s internet. Unfortunately, the internet is not a safe place, but a place where malicious attackers and foreign spies lurk to get hold of your data to commit fraud, extortion, or industrial espionage,” the German email provider states.

Mandating a backdoor is not just compromising the security of all users, but most likely also in contradiction with European data protection laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“Backdoors created for law enforcement inevitably become potential entry points for malicious actors,” Tuta warns.

The amendment has already been passed by the Senate and is now moving to the National Assembly. Tuta calls on the members of the lower house to reject this amendment, stating that “a backdoor for the good guys” doesn’t exist.

In the United Kingdom, a similar scenario is currently going on. The government has demanded Apple create a backdoor to access users’ end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups. Because of this order, Apple decided to pull its Advanced Data Protection feature in the UK.

“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom. As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will,” Apple said in a statement.