Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for the amendment.

The purpose of the Bill is not to prohibit the use of technologies by providers of designated online services and, accordingly, I cannot accept the amendment. The technologies referenced by this amendment have legitimate uses. In particular, the reference to “encryption backdoors” would appear to prohibit the use of any encryption which is not end-to-end encryptionby a provider of a private communications or online storage service. This would be highly disproportionate. It would have significant unintended consequences, especially for providers of business-to-business technologies such as various videoconferencing solutions which, for very good reasons, may be encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted. I will, therefore, not accept the amendment.