An open letter to the European Parliament's LIBE committee

In an effort to stem the tide of external control over user privacy, Matomo has rallied with other like-minded companies like Protonmail, NextCloud, Tutanota and Mailfence, to advocate for pro-privacy changes to the European Commission’s “e-evidence” proposal.

Excerpt from the letter: 

“The Commission’s e-evidence proposal threatens the competitive advantage European tech businesses have over their American counterparts by undermining the protections we can provide to our customers. It breaks with the long-standing rule that only trusted national judicial authorities can order companies to hand over customer data for criminal investigations. Instead, the Commission’s e-evidence proposal would allow any foreign law enforcement agency from across the EU to force us to hand out customer data without our own authorities doublechecking the foreign order.

“Different from American Big Tech firms, European privacy tech companies lack the resources to verify the legality of each foreign order. Because of the way the e-evidence proposal is phrased, we would not even be able to properly authenticate foreign authorities to ensure that we are not replying to a malicious actor – let alone object to an order if we found it to be unwarranted.”

Matomo Founder, Matthieu Aubry emphasises, “It is time that privacy-minded tech companies work together to defend their users, their businesses, and the values they are founded on. This is why we are supporting Privacy Tech Europe.”

Read our open letter to members of the LIBE Committee in full.