The Dutch government has released a statement in which it says that "it is currently not desirable to take restricting legal measures concerning the development, availability and use of encryption within the Netherlands." It also notes that forcing companies to add backdoors to their products and services would have "undesirable consequences for the security of communicated and stored information," since "digital systems can become vulnerable to criminals, terrorists and foreign intelligence services."

The Dutch government's declaration, translated by Matthijs R. Koot, looks at both sides of encryption—the benefits it provides by allowing sensitive information to be protected, and the issues it raises for the police and security services. It recognises that crypto "enables everyone to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of communication, and defend against, for instance, espionage and cyber crime. Fundamental rights and freedoms as well as security interests and economic interests benefit from this."

But it also acknowledges that the use of encryption by criminals "complicates, delays, or makes it impossible to gain (timely) insight in communication for the purpose of protecting national security and the purpose of prosecuting criminal offenses. Furthermore, court hearings and the providing of evidence in court for a conviction can be severely hindered."

Despite this tension, the Dutch government accepts that undermining encryption, for example by mandating backdoors, is not the way to go: "Currently, there is no outlook on possibilities to, in a general sense, for instance via standards, weaken encryption products without compromising the security of digital systems that use encryption."

Instead, the Dutch government believes that "In carrying out their legal tasks, prosecution services and intelligence & security services are partially reliant on cooperation from providers of IT products and services." However, that still leaves the tricky issue of services employing end-to-end encryption where the service providers are unable to access the communications, even if the authorities tried to compel them to do so.

As Koot points out in the preface to his translation, as far as the Dutch government's comment about not restricting the use of crypto is concerned, "they explicitly state ‘currently’—there’s always the possibility that their position may change in the future." Moreover, "current Dutch law provides some forms of compelled decryption," so the authorities don't need to depend upon companies' goodwill entirely. But even with these caveats, the Dutch government's public support for encryption, and acceptance that mandatory backdoors are positively harmful for security, shows a more enlightened attitude than that of the UK government, for example.

Moreover, the Dutch government says that it will actively "propagate this conclusion, and the arguments that underlie it, in the international context." It's even putting its money where its mouth is: the statement on encryption concludes by confirming that the Dutch government will be making a grant of €500,000 to support the important and widely used OpenSSL project.