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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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

The "parliament cannot bind its successors" principle was absolutely (and deliberately) imported into US law, yes.

It's more general -- no branch of government can bind its own successors. (With the exception of e.g. presidential pardons which cannot be undone)

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 If you don't think the entertainment industry counts for much, I might remind you Linux was originally made in Finland.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…

Facebook is just scams and intervenes with elections. Google is just privacy hell that sells your data for ads. Amazon is in the business of abusing its workers. Point being, it was asked for success. Not if people like the company or not.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a convention of the states that can change the constitution. It has been talked about by various groups from time to time, but has never happened.

Are you sure? Isn't that how the ban on alcohol was lifted?

good question. I'm not clear after reading Wikipedia how that happened. US congress called for this which is how amendments are normally handled, but then it seems to have done something weird.

I'm not interested enough in the question to dig deeper to figure out what is what. I'll leave this as a "I stand corrected" but if you care do dig deeper.

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a convention of the states that can change the constitution. It has been talked about by various groups from time to time, but has never happened.

Are you sure? Isn't that how the ban on alcohol was lifted?

There are two types of constitutional convention.

State ratifying conventions, which you are correct is the way that the 21st amendment was ratified by the states after having received a two thirds majority in congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_ratifying_conventions

Article V conventions, which replace the legislature stage but then need to be ratified by the states either by the legislatures or by a state ratifying convention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendmen...

the latter has never happened and the constitution is very vague about what they would entail, and I think is what the earlier poster was referencing (there has been some recent noise around them)

this graphic is quite helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_ratifying_conventions#/m...

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

#155
post #120

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?

If we're talking chips, ARM is also quite noteworthy...

FinTech is pretty awesome in Europe too: Wise, Revolut, Klarna, Adyen are all unicorns/decacorns.

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

#156
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have a codified constitution in the US sense but it does have a constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin... Edit: I would certainly agree that having constitution in this form isn't a great idea...

Frankly, the US system isn't exactly a resounding vindication of written constitutions either. Arguably the UK system has displayed considerably greater flexibility. For example the US president is still basically an elected George III.

[deleted]

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

#157
post #66

For a better understanding: The Court held (in the circumstances of this case) that a legal obligation to decrypt E2E communications is a disproportionate interference with the right to privacy. The law in question specifically obligated messengers such as Telegram to hand over communications alongside the "information necessary to decrypt electronic messages if they were encrypted". To come to that conclusion, it re…

>While a ruling on a specific case (and law), the Court seems quite skeptical towards any "requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users". If I were the UK government, I would be quite worried that the UK Online Safety Bill will be overturned by domestic courts (or the European Court) on the basis of this ruling. It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parli…

Prefacing this with the fact that I never had a good feel for UK law due, in part due to it being a common law system vs. the common law system I’m more familiar with on mainland Europe. Plus, I’ve not kept up with what, if anything, the UK maintained concerning supranational jurisdiction after Brexit.

That said, what you describe is similar to that of some EU countries. Take the Netherlands for example.

In the Netherlands, courts can’t test laws passed by the Dutch parliament to the Dutch constitution. Even the Dutch Supreme Court doesn’t have that power (and Dutch legal scholars will therefore deny that the Dutch Supreme Court is a so-called “constitutional court” like the Germans have, for example).

Still, in practice, this is a non-issue because the legal hierarchy places international and EU law above Dutch law, making it the supreme law of the land.

Subsequently, this allows Dutch courts to test against international and EU law, which, for the most part anyway, have similar provisions to that of the Dutch constitution when it comes to (human) rights.

I suppose the question I’m asking is if in practice, the situation is the same or similar in the UK?

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

#158

For a better understanding: The Court held (in the circumstances of this case) that a legal obligation to decrypt E2E communications is a disproportionate interference with the right to privacy. The law in question specifically obligated messengers such as Telegram to hand over communications alongside the "information necessary to decrypt electronic messages if they were encrypted". To come to that conclusion, it re…

Perhaps a dumb question, but why would the EU courts be able to overturn laws in the UK now that the UK is not part of the EU anymore?

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

#159
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I'm wrong about the constitutional court sentencing Catalan nationalist politicians to prison, that's not something I know; feel free to correct me.

I don't know what that has to do with free movement, nor how that's related to the imprisoned politicians.

FWIW, I don't accept the notion of "human rights" - there are in reality only those privileges that are actually granted. I would like it if there were some kind of universally-accepted set of rights; but only if they are congruent with my own views about what "rights" should look like.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Facebook is just scams and intervenes with elections. Google is just privacy hell that sells your data for ads. Amazon is in the business of abusing its workers. Point being, it was asked for success. Not if people like the company or not.

What an intellectually dishonest take comparing Candy Crush to US big tech. You should be embarrassed.
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