The EU Digital Markets Act’s Interoperability Rule Addresses An Important Need, But Raises Difficult Security Problems for Encrypted Messaging

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) allows new messaging services to demand interoperability (the ability to exchange messages) from the internet's largest messaging services (like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage). Interoperability is an important tool to promote competition and prevent monopolists from shutting down user-empowering innovation. But an interoperability requirement for messaging services that are end-to-end encrypted raises particularly thorny security and privacy concerns, and those concerns need to be addressed before interoperability requirements are enforced against those services. …

act competition cyber security legislation digital digital markets act digital services act encrypted encrypted messaging eu eu policy legislative analysis markets messaging problems security