There is growing concern regarding the role that encryption on personal devices might play in the future of law enforcement activities. Strong encryption, which uses large keys that are controversially hard to crack, has caused complaints in recent years as manufacturers such as Apple and Google increasingly add these features to their devices. What these companies have done is not new technology, but the broader application of existing public-private key encryption in a way that’s easy to use for the average consumer.

In April 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation was signed into law by the European Parliament and was enforceable as of May 25^th 2018. This EU regulation lays out a wide number of policies that require businesses to protect personal data. Companies must have policies and technology controls to securely store or transfer personal data of any person residing in the EU. The way the various articles of the regulation read, this means at a minimum that data needs to be encrypted or made anonymous.