Europol is asking EU member states to gather examples of how end-to-end encryption technologies are being exploited by criminals as law enforcement authorities reinvigorate calls for full lawful access to encrypted messages.

Authorities are continually struggling to amass evidence of criminal gangs using encrypted messaging services to evade law enforcement efforts in order to quantify the issue and better make their case for how encryption can harm crime prevention efforts.

Popular encrypted messaging services include WhatsApp, Meta’s Facebook Messenger, and Signal. Monitoring the communication of known or suspected criminals have been made difficult as it is impossible to collect data from encrypted messages without a pass key in order to maintain user privacy.

The call for evidence aims to show how encryption has interrupted or prevent police investigations into criminal activity, though it remains unclear if presented evidence will be released to the public.

Encrypted messaging has long been the scourge of law enforcement campaigns which have investigations stalled or disrupted by a lack of access to potentially incriminating messages.

With a warrant, UK police are able to request personal messages for a criminal investigation directly from a network provider or platform, and encrypted messages can be decrypted in certain cases.

Still, Europol director general, Catherine De Bolle, has called on Bit Tech to give law enforcement full access to encrypted data and messages.

Tech companies have a “social responsibility” to provide encrypted messages to police for a criminal investigation, De Bolle told the Financial Times.

The call highlights the disconnect between security and cybersecurity – whereas law enforcement argues encrypted messaging enables criminals to maintain anomynity, tech and privacy experts say that encryption ensures privacy and better protects users from cyber-attacks.

Law enforcement in the past have called for “cooperation” between tech companies and authorities, saying that police access to encrypted data and communications should be “lawful and strictly controlled.”

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Without clearer legislation, law enforcement also warned that tech companies are left in a dilemma on the legal and ethical ramifications on decrypting data and sharing it with criminal investigators.

In the UK, a case exposing criminal gangs using EncroChat exposed the potential fallout of relaxed protections on encrypted communications. The investigation relied on the bulk surveillance of EncroChat messages, staking this on the claim that all communications over the app were criminal. This case raised alarm bells concerning how far law enforcement authorities could take their powers if able.

Encryption, however, has continually come under fire in terms of child safety and harms, with law enforcement saying it hinders the ability to prosecute heinous crimes including child sexual abuse, human trafficking, and terrorism.

It was a major sticking point of the Online Safety Act, earlier drafts of which threatened to dismantle encryption by pre-screening messages.

Tech and security experts have warned that backdoors to encrypted messaging not only leaves room for law enforcement, but for criminals as well. Further, protecting privacy – the ultimate point of end-to-end encryption – would be largely ineffective if surveillance became the norm.