  Former US attorney general William Barr and law enforcement colleagues from
other countries have published a statement on end-to-end encryption from which
we quote: "while encryption is vital and privacy and cybersecurity must be
protected, that should not come at the expense of wholly precluding law
enforcement". The main argument put forward by law enforcement is that
end-to-end encryption (E2EE) hampers authorities prosecuting criminals who rely
on encrypted communication - ranging from drug syndicates to child sexual abuse
material (CSAM) platforms. This statement, however, is not supported by
empirical evidence, and therefore not suitable as the sole basis of
policymaking. That is why, in our work, we analyse public court data from the
Netherlands to show to what extent law enforcement agencies and the public
prosecution service are impacted by the use of E2EE in bringing cases to court
and their outcome. Our results show that Dutch law enforcement appears to be as
successful in prosecuting offenders who rely on encrypted communication as
those who do not. In contrast to what the US attorney general wants us to
believe, at least the prosecution of cases does not seem hampered by E2EE.
