encryption

The Dutch police, in cooperation with the FBI, took down an international illegal market on the dark web, the police announced in a statement on Thursday. A large number of traders of drugs, jewels and counterfeit goods were arrested, NOS reports.

Early last month the Canadian, American and Thai authorities took down illegal trading place Alphabay. After that many users turned to Hansa, which was now taken down by the Dutch police. That seems to have been part of the plan, because the police managed to track down traders and buyers by keeping the site running for a month.

Google parent company Alphabet turned heads last week with the announcement of a sleek new smartwatch from its life sciences subsidiary Verily. Though not planned for the consumer market, the Verily Study Watch will be part of a joint research project between the firm and Radboud University in Nijmegen to examine the effect of multiple factors on the progression of Parkinson’s disease.

Dutch intelligence service AIVD wants to restrict encryption on chat services like WhatsApp and Telegram as much as possible, head of the service Rob Bertholee said in an interview with the Volkskrant. According to him, being able to read suspected person's communication is essential for "protecting the legal order".

Terrorists and other criminals increasingly use encryption, making it harder and harder for intelligence services to break into their communications, according to Dutch experts in a report to the UN Security Council, BNR reports.

The Dutch cabinet has no plans to force businesses to build in “backdoors” for investigative agencies to snoop on data, Security and Justice Minister Ard van der Steur told parliament on Monday. The ruling coalition sees the privacy and security provided by encryption methods as being more important than making it easier for authorities to access information.

Scientists from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) are working on technology that can protect data from the immense power anticipated of quantum computers, expected to begin appearing around 2025. Supercomputers will have the potential to jeopardize sensitive data because their decryption capacity will likely surpass that of current encryption techniques.