The going dark debate has spread to Europe. The commercial growth of encryption and a wave of terrorist attacks have spurred new laws to detect and disrupt terrorism. This article reviews the most recent encryption-related legislation in France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Poland. The article discusses the legislative debates, as well as aims to achieve coordination at the EU level. Although Europe has so far disavowed banning encryption or mandating pre-installed backdoors, several countries have enacted statutes authorizing compelled decryption. The article concludes by briefly comparing the European approach to the American legal regime.

Over at Daily Beast I explain why I think White House Counsel Don McGahn should have discovered and fixed Michael Flynn's foreign agent problems long before Flynn became National Security Advisor.

It is more than a little amusing, in light of the events of the last week, that we still see concerns about whether “we’re in a constitutional crisis” due to excessive presidential power, and about “how much … the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich,” and about how the United States is part of a global movement on a downward spiral toward “repressive kleptocracy.”

In partnership with Hoover Institution in Washington and Intel Security, Lawfare is holding on February 22 a conference on what we can expect in cybersecurity in the new administration. Here's the event announcement. RSVPs are required, so please sign up.