Euroviews. When law enforcement undermines our digital safety, who is looking after our interests?

Imagine your friend sent you a private DM on Twitter. Now imagine, instead of the content remaining for your eyes only, Twitter letting the police also take a peek at it.

Such intrusive practices of state actors accessing private messages have grave consequences for our lives. Some people can be physically harmed, and for some, it can mean that their families and friends could get prosecuted.

At a collective level, the harm this does to our communities and society at large is immeasurable.

Despite this, the European Commission has recently established a new High-Level Group (HLG) tasked with giving national law enforcement representatives the space to discuss how the police can get their hands on more personal information and circumvent digital safety tools like encryption. 

The group has therefore been called the “Going Dark” HLG. This particular HLG is a clear example of the increasing push for more access to personal data for law enforcement purposes.

This Tuesday, tech experts from the largest digital rights network in Europe, European Digital Rights (EDRi), will join the HLG consultation in the European Commission to push for strong privacy protections. 

The focus falls particularly on the participation process which has been unequal and opaque as members of the HLG have invited several surveillance industry players to attend meetings while rejecting civil society’s expertise.

What is evident in the discussions for more law enforcement access to personal data is that security is defined by the needs of the police and the state, not by the people or the communities most at risk. 

In particular, security is seen as directly linked to the preservation of the state as an institution and its policies. 

For example, when activists