Legal and Security Issues expert group

Activities

Letter to the European Commission: Concerning the Anticipated acquisition by Nvidia of Arm’s Intellectual Property Group business

CEPIS’ Legal and Security Issues Special Interest Network (LSI SIN) has submitted a letter to the Executive Vice-President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age and Competition Margrethe Vestager and the Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton about the anticipated acquisition of Arm’s Intellectual Property Group business by Nvidia.

The group has analysed the situation and has found serious reasons for concerns, that are presented in more detail in the attachment.

Statement: Right to Encryption Instead of a Master Key For Encrypted Communication

CEPIS’ Legal and Security Issues Special Interest Network (LSI SIN) calls for the rejection of a planned resolution in the Council of Ministers, which would grant authorities special access to encrypted communication between EU citizens. The special access, or ‘master key’, will weaken end-to-end encryption, and endangers digitisation in Europe, the LSI network warns. For this reason, the LSI Network and CEPIS call on the German Federal Government as the current Council Chair, the European Commission, and the European Parliament to vehemently oppose this proposal to weaken end-to-end encryption and instead advocate a European “right to encryption”.

Open letter on E-evidence Regulation: CEPIS calls for no direct cross-border access to personal data

The European Commission’s draft proposal for a Regulation on cross-border access to electronic evidence in criminal matters includes enabling law enforcement authorities of a Member State (issuing state) to directly oblige providers established in another Member State (enforcing state) to disclose metadata and content data of their customers.

The CEPIS LSI SIN has drafted an open letter which strongly warns against this initiative. The proposal deprives states of the ability to protect the fundamental rights of their citizens. It undermines European data protection law and threatens to damage the existing international system of mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. Only two years after the deadline for implementing the European investigation order, it has not been clarified whether there are any gaps in cross-border criminal prosecution.

CEPIS signs open letter to EU Commissioners on Deep Packet Inspection

Internet access service providers are increasingly using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology for traffic management and differentiated pricing of specific services or applications as part of their product design. DPI inspects in detail the data being sent over a computer network and blocks, rerouts or logs data according to necessity. Most often users are not consulted or informed about the use of DPI.
That is why an open letter to the European Commission was initiated by EDRi and epicenter.works. Another 12 organisations from all over Europe signed the letter in support. These concerns align with those of CEPIS. On the initiative of the LSI SIN, CEPIS has added its voice to the signatories of this letter.

CEPIS calls for really secure ICT hardware and software in Europe

Even in 2018, there are still basic information security deficits in Europe: confidentiality, integrity and also availability of data from authorities, companies and private individuals are still not guaranteed. Moreover, countless security holes are the gateway to successful attacks on data and digital infrastructures. With reference to the research of its German Member Society Gesellschaft für Informatik eV, CEPIS calls for finally ending the decades-long insecurity of marketable PC and server processors and software.