Criminalization of encryption : the 8 december case

Op-ed: ʻEncryption protects our rights, privacy is not a crimeʼ

The beginning of the “8 December” trial is also the judgement of the right to privacy and encryption

In this case, protecting one’s privacy and encrypting communications is no longer merely suspect, but participates of constituting a “clandestine behavior”, a way of concealing criminal intentions. In several memos, the DGSI keeps on trying to demonstrate how the use of tools such as Signal, Tor, Proton, Silence, etc., would be evidence of a desire to hide compromising elements. And on top of this, as we denounced last June, the DGSI justifies the absence of evidence of a terrorist project by the use of encryption tools itself. According to them, if they lack of elements proving a terrorist intent, it’s because those proofs are necessarily hold back in those much-vaunted encrypted and inaccessible messages. In reaction of such absurd vicious circle, lawyers of a person charged denounced the fact that “here, the absence of evidence becomes an evidence itself“.