The study was written by a group of IT security experts

Apr 24, 2015 00:22 GMT  ·  By

According to a new study that was discussed today, April 23, in a committee meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels, a group of IT security experts think that the European Union should finance key open source projects that strengthen privacy and security, and configure certification schemes for fundamental open source tools.

The study suggests that in addition to funding key open source projects, the European Union should also finance regular bug hunts, where independent hackers and security researchers can gather together and try to find and fix security issues in major open source tools.

The group of IT specialists who wrote the EU study think that using open source tools is not a universal remedy, but it is an "important ingredient in an EU strategy for more security and technological independence." They firmly believe that supporting key open source projects will increase the European Union’s technological independence.

EU should participate in the development of open source software

In addition, the IT security experts who wrote the study for the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), suggest that the European Union should also finance or participate in the development of open source software that provide end-to-end encryption solutions, in order to make them easier to use.

The study is called "Mass Surveillance" and it's split in two PDF files. While the first one is entitled "Risk, Opportunities, and Mitigation Strategies," the second one is called simply "Technology Foresight." The study explains why open source software should be used instead of proprietary ones for reducing the risk of privacy intrusion by mass surveillance.

The group of IT security specialists who wrote the "Mass Surveillance" study also believe that "The EU should invest in resilient open source implementations of different encryption specifications that can be verified and validated for correctness."