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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

#141

Post by hot_gril »

AJ007 wrote: post #13
nottorp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's done right, it can't be subverted in case of "emergency" can it? If it's full of bugs, it simply doesn't matter.

The "e2e" concept that most are familiar with is basically fake: the provider is responsible for the client that does the encryption and decryption. Of course they can break it if forced. Software exploits are a separate matter and also easier to deal with when the end user isn't truly in control of the encryption (or easier if they don't know what they are doing.)

It's more fake because you download the app, look up your friend's number "1-555-333-2222", and your client trusts their server to actually return your friend instead of a MITM. Some asterisks there, but basically it's far from trustless.

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

#142

Post by moffkalast »

gpderetta wrote: post #107
miohtama wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This decision was needed because the EU was about to ban end-to-end encryption. It’s not the EU commission, but a judge that ruled. AFAIK Commission can still ignore this.

They in fact cannot.

Ursula on suicide watch.

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

#143

Post by sorokod »

dukeyukey wrote: post #131
seanw444 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parliament. Interesting. I didn't know this, and as an American, it seems quite odd. Decisions by the parliament are treated as immutable there? Here, if a bill passed by Congress is deemed unconstitutional, it can be struck down by the Supreme Court.

Parliament is sovereign. Basically, as long as Parliament says so, it can do what it wants, although it can be slowed down by institutions like the Supreme Court or the royal family. There is no real separation powers. Which _sounds_ bad, but the UK has an extremely long history of relative stability compared to basically anywhere else on the planet, so something must be going right.

This stability presupposes a presence of adults in the room.

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

#145

Post by iamthirsty »

dfawcus wrote: post #129
zajio1am wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more correct to use 'UK' (or any other country) just for government and its institutions than for the body of its citizens.

A minor quibble. The UK is a 'state', not a 'country'. It comprises of countries: Scotland, England, Wales, and a small chunk of Ireland.

As recognized by the rest of the world, the United Kingdom actually is a country.

Internally may be different, but technically it is a country.

A political union of four member countries — but still recognized as a country.

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

#146

Post by berkes »

pb7 wrote: post #120
scotty79 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do what everyone can do if you can do the thing only you can do? ASML When there's a gold rush, make shovels.

That’s it? One noteworthy company for a population of 440M?

Obviously not. There are tons of large companies, many of which are often misread as American, because they are listed on the Nasdaq or another US exchange.

Many EU companies have far higher revenues than their US counterparts (Airbus, Volkswagen, Alstom), are boring but crucial (Heidelberg, DTE) or not easily recognised (Novo Nordisk, Unilever).

Even in tech, there's a lot of interesting ones: Booking.com, elastic search, takeaway (aka GrubHub), Adyen, for example are all Dutch. There's or was, Spotify, Skype, SoundCloud, Zalando, Mojang, Shazam and so on.

Just be a bit more curious and less preoccupied and you'll see there's plenty going on in Europe. And don't forget that companies can be great and big and multinationals even if they aren't present in the US.

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

#147

Post by ganieldackle »

amarant wrote: post #135
pb7 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Examples?

Spotify, King, DICE and Mojang are some commercial software successes. All from Sweden. If you don't think the entertainment industry counts for much, I might remind you Linux was originally made in Finland. (Linus Torvalds is half Swede half Finn iirc) That's just from the top of my head.

Spotify was made up of 75% US employees since the moment it validated its value.

DICE is a failed studio. Battlefield 2042 was one of the worst AAA video game launches of all time (with Cyberpunk 2077 by Polish studio CD Projekt Red being another) after a rocky Battlefield V launch and there is no reason to believe they will come back from it.

King makes low quality micro-transaction-riddled games for addicts.

Mojang -- OK.

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

#148

Post by sorokod »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #130
seanw444 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parliament. Interesting. I didn't know this, and as an American, it seems quite odd. Decisions by the parliament are treated as immutable there? Here, if a bill passed by Congress is deemed unconstitutional, it can be struck down by the Supreme Court.

> Decisions by the parliament are treated as immutable there? Yes, and no. Parliament is sovereign -- it is the supreme legal authority. But it cannot bind its successors. So any law parliament creates, any decision can be overturned by a subsequent parliament.

Is that not similar to how the US constitution is managed? It was amended and latter un-amended in the case of prohibition (18th and 21st amendments)

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

#149

Post by vdaea »

denton-scratch wrote: post #95
vdaea wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constitutional court of Spain ruled the state of alarm (a kind of state of emergency) that was used to prohibit gatherings during the pandemic was unconstitutional. But by then the damage was made of course.

The constitutional court of Spain is an ultra-rightwing joke. Imprisoning Catalan nationalist politicians for calling for independence brought that court into disrepute. I'm not keen on written constitutions, or constitutional courts cough US Supremes>.

Errr, that's not exactly what they did, as well as you know :-)

In any case I hope we can agree that it's good that they said that restricting our constitutional right to free movement was illegal, even if it had no consequences for those who violated our basic rights so blatantly.

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

#150

Post by SllX »

krastanov wrote: post #30
tokai wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a judgement that will provide precedence. A Pirate Party member of the European Parliament comments because its a core issue to the party. Why would there be anything about the Pirate Party in the ruling?

I thought precedents only matter in the US "common law" framework, but most of the EU is following the "civil law" framework where precedents do not matter. Does this precedent really matter?

It’s a Council of Europe institution (note, not EU), so really there’s no common legal philosophy, just the relevant treaties and conventions.

The European Court of Human Rights’ whole raison d’être is the European Convention on Human Rights, so it interprets laws through the lens of whether they conform to that, and does have its own case law, albeit a short history of it.

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