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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

#191
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it's quite hard to change the constitution. It requires agreement from 2/3rds of Congress followed by ratification by the individual legislatures of 3/4ths of the states. Such a thing has not been done since 1992, and not on a politically charged question since 1971.

> Such a thing has not been done since 1992 We’re a 235-year old republic. Changing the firmware once every 10 to 15% of the time seems fine. > and not on a politically charged question since 1971 This is a feature. If a question is charged it should be resolved first federally, through the states, and then politically, via the legislature. Only once there is consensus should it be elevated to Constitutional status.…

And given that the point of a constitution is to set the bounds within policy-making takes place, rather than to enact policy on any specific issue, this is a very important thing.

Past attempts to shoehorn answers to specific policy questions into the constitution have been disasters, but even if they hadn't been, using constitutional amendment as a vehicle for policy is effectively the same as having no constitution at all.

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

#192
post #146
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

The EU's entire modern tech industry does not even measure up to that of one US company.

Dismissals of the EU's inability to compete in tech is why EU citizens have missed out on literally tens of trillions of dollars in economic growth post-2000s.

The EU's lack of ability to innovate is becoming a serious problem for the progress of our species as a whole.

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

#193

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 a cynical interpretation. These companies have QoL for billions, directly and indirectly. You are just normalized to it now.

For some reason I don't see you blaming Cambridge Analytica - the actual company running the interference by exploiting APIs - for the interference itself.

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

#194
post #89

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.

Judicial review isn't necessarily an obvious or completely desirable concept. It's not in the US Constitution either, and Marbury v. Madison is still somewhat controversial.

From the outset, officials in all branches of government have sworn an oath to uphold the constitution in the conduct of their duties, and the constitution explicitly states that it is the supreme federal law, so it seems that Marbury vs. Madison would follow logically from the justices' obligation to only issue rulings consistent with the constitution as they understand it.

One could regard the legislature as having an equivalent duty to refrain from enacting statutes incompatible with the constitution, and the executive as having an equivalent duty to refrain from enforcement actions inconsistent with the constitution, but historically, the judiciary seems to have been the only branch to take its duty seriously.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

International football being one exception to this.

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

#196
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Nethe…

> In the Netherlands, courts can’t test laws passed by the Dutch parliament to the Dutch constitution. What does that mean in practice? That the constitution always overrides any law passed by parliament?

It's the other way around, actually… sort of.

It means that a Dutch court can't test the constitutionality of laws made by the Dutch government in concert with parliament. In legal parlance translated from Dutch, these would be called "laws in the formal sense."

The way it works is that the Dutch government (i.e., the Dutch ministers and the King, albeit the latter only in a ceremonious role) proposes a bill, and the two Dutch legislative houses (House of Representatives and Senate) vote to pass it.

A law that is a product of this process is deemed a "formal law" or "law in the formal sense." Courts cannot test these against the Dutch constitution (i.e., look to see if they're constitutional).

Other forms of legislation can be tested against the constitution by courts.

These are called "material laws" or "laws in the material senses" because, materially, they function as a law in the sense that they prescribe something and are generally binding. Still, they haven't been established in a "formal" manner through the process I described above that involves the government and parliament.

Examples of such material laws are municipal ordinances and royal decrees issued by the Dutch government (akin to the American executive orders by the US president).

Some laws that have been materialized through the process described above are also considered material laws instead of formal laws, but that's more a matter of exception when they don't have a generally binding character for all citizens (e.g., a permission law for the marriage of a specific member of the royal family).

A judge can't look at these formal laws and rule that they're unconstitutional.

Ironically, the Dutch constitution itself (art. 120) prohibits this test.

The logic at the time was that they wanted to prevent the judicial branch from second-guessing the legislative branch and that if it misbehaved, the voters could punish them during the next election round.

Additionally, they wanted to enshrine that the government, in concert with the two legislative houses, should be the unimpeachable sole authority to create laws.

However, this means that the Dutch constitution functions more as a set of guidelines for the highest level of legislators than a strict set of rules to abide by.

That said, nowadays, there is some political will here and there every couple of legislative sessions to reform it so that the courts are allowed to test against the constitution, with some ideas even going as far as establishing a formal constitutional court for this purpose.

As someone who used to practice there, I think it's more a matter of trivia that raises eyebrows in your first year of law school than something with many practical consequences.

As stated before, international and EU treaties have taken over the Dutch constitution's role in keeping the legislator in check. So far, legislators haven't sought to cross the lines in remarkable ways.

Nevertheless, I'd welcome testing constitutionality as an extra layer in the legal firewall, provided it's designed in a way that leads to results seen in the German, French, and Scandinavian models, as opposed to the results and effects caused by the SCOTUS in the US.

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

#197
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Nethe…

As a canadian, this is interesting, because i always thought our system was a copy of the UK system, but our courts strike down laws for being unconstitutional all the time.

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

#198

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…

>> information necessary to decrypt electronic messages if they were encrypted

That reminds me of Lavabit, which I once used as my primary email. In response to demands for decryption information, Lavabit handed over their private keys. On paper. Typed out. Possibly with a typo somewhere on page 6, or 12.

https://thenextweb.com/news/you-wont-believe-what-email-prov...

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Nethe…

As a canadian, this is interesting, because i always thought our system was a copy of the UK system, but our courts strike down laws for being unconstitutional all the time.

It is a copy. The UK has a constitution. The UK constitution just isn't a simple document one can hang on the wall. The UK constitution is a body of knowledge and traditions. Recognize and do something a particular way for a few hundred years and it can become constitutional irrespective of whether it was nicely codified in a single document.

One can even say that the US and Canadian constitutions don't actually say all that much. They survive because they are so open to interpretation by courts ... which makes the body of constitutional knowledge needed to render decisions not all that different than that needed in the UK.

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

#200
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that Rwanda is a safe country to which asylum seekers can be sent Putting aside whether the UK government's approach is a sensible one (which in my view it isn't) we should be aware that: "the UNHCR, with financial support from the EU, has transferred refugees from Libya to Rwanda under a scheme called the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) [..] The ETM offers vulnerable refugees, taken into detention by the Libyan…

> So Rwanda was apparently safe enough for the UNHCR to offer to process some refugees there. I think the key word here is safer . It wasn’t safe by any definition of the word, but a fair deal safer than the place they came from.

> It wasn’t safe by any definition of the word, but a fair deal safer than the place they came from

(Playing devil's advocate) why would this not also apply to those refugees fleeing to Europe?

Isn't Rwanda "a fair deal safer" than Afghanistan? (This is a genuine question)

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