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European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

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Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#4
post #3

Is there an exception for emergency purposes?

When there is an emergency to break into a house, the police needs to get a mandate from a judge.

Well, there is actually an exception to that too - the Police can break into any home, without a warrant, in the US, if they can prove they had reasonable cause to believe that there was imminent and immediate threat of bodily harm or death.

If you are a police officer and see a guy clearly pointing a gun at someone else through the window, yes, you can break in if the circumstances warrant that.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#6
post #3

Is there an exception for emergency purposes?

When there is an emergency to break into a house, the police needs to get a mandate from a judge.

No, they don't. Many countries have the concept of "imminent danger", which allows police to skip the warrants. It's called "Gefahr im Verzug" in Germany, for instance.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#8
post #3

Is there an exception for emergency purposes?

When there is an emergency to break into a house, the police needs to get a mandate from a judge.

Depends on where you are. In the US there's the Exigent Circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. Not sure if the same theory has been included in EU countries but I would be surprised if it hadn't, a quick search didn't turn up much english language about it.

https://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/155

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#9
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there is an emergency to break into a house, the police needs to get a mandate from a judge.

Well, there is actually an exception to that too - the Police can break into any home, without a warrant, in the US, if they can prove they had reasonable cause to believe that there was imminent and immediate threat of bodily harm or death. If you are a police officer and see a guy clearly pointing a gun at someone else through the window, yes, you can break in if the circumstances warrant that.

Or if you receive an anonymous call from a swatter..

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#10
I am a bit confused. The article seems fairly political, quoting some promotional text by the pirate party and not describing what case was brought in front of a judge and what the ruling bans specifically, so I clicked through to the actual court case linked at the bottom.

It has nothing to do with the pirate party or chatcontrol or any such thing. The court case was one person against the Russian government for fining Telegram when they didn't hand over plain text chat messages, if I'm skimming the initial facts section correctly. The whole article doesn't even contain the word russia. What is the article reporting on and why does it portray it as being related to the recent chatcontrol legislation?!

Edit: found the decision

> 80. The Court concludes from the foregoing that the contested legislation providing for the retention of all Internet communications of all users, the security services’ direct access to the data stored without adequate safeguards against abuse and the requirement to decrypt encrypted communications, as applied to end-to-end encrypted communications, cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.

> 81. There has accordingly been a violation of Article 8 [privacy] of the Convention [of human rights]

Sounds like you can indeed extend that to any other encryption-circumventing law, like chatcontrol, but without considering the specific circumstances that were present in this Russian law, I'm not sure that it will be accurate. Note, for example, the wording in paragraph 80 "without adequate safeguards against abuse". Maybe chatcontrol had those, if that had been brought in front of the same judges

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