Europol and Cybercrime: Europol’s Sharing Decryption Platform

This article examines the resource sharing functionality of the decryption platform of Europol. The platform supports European law enforcement agencies (LEAs) that are having difficulties accessing legally obtained encrypted evidence due to the lack of human and technical resources. The article investigates Europol’s resource transmission role with sharing economy variables such as transaction cost and trust-building. The core argument of the article is that Europol’s sharing platform has a strong potential to reduce the transaction cost of outsourcing the decryption services and diminish trust-related problems for national policing agencies by replacing private sector actors. However, for a more sustainable cybercrime investigation strategy, the decryption platform needs a new market-oriented model supported with robust vetting and evidence security mechanisms to encourage more private company participation.