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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

#71

Post by vdaea »

martimarkov wrote: post #23
vdaea wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at least in Spain. There's "In flagrante delicto" which means if the police suspects something going on they can kick your door down. It was used many times during the pandemic: when they suspected you were having too many people over at home, they acted. Unconstitutionally, mind you. The EU is not the utopia many think it is.

You’d need to define “unconstitutionally” as it seems if they have the right then it is constitutional

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.

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

#72

Post by Deukhoofd »

tpm wrote: post #64
Deukhoofd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a part of the Council of Europe, which includes all European countries besides Russia and Belarus (who got kicked out last year). It has no real enforcement powers for its judgements, though most countries do adopt most its judgements, and it has pushed human rights in Europe forward a lot. While the EU could potentially just ignore the statement, there's a good chance they won't, especially as the European Parl…

EU can't ignore it - while the ECHR is separate from the EU, the EU itself is legally bound to follow the ECHR rulings.

ECtHR rulings have been ignored in the past by members. Italy for example currently has over 2000 verdicts unimplemented. The ECtHR orders a country to implement changes to improve the situation, but does not set a deadline, so members could just ignore it.

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

#73

Post by seanw444 »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #66
Quanttek wrote: post #24

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…

> 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.

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

#74

Post by willmadden »

stranded22 wrote: post #48
iamthirsty wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the UK Online Safety Bill will be overturned by domestic courts (or the European Court) on the basis of this ruling. The UK wants to leave the ECHR[0], so they might be able to get around it — unfortunately. — [0]: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/03/uk-must-not-sleepwalk-l...

The UK DOES NOT WANT TO LEAVE THE ECHR. Select people in the government want to, not the whole of UK.

The coverage I heard on the BBC and NPR in the States about Brexit and UK public sentiment was a complete inversion of reality. I'm reluctant to believe anyone telling me what the UK wants.

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

#75

Post by KoolKat23 »

yxhuvud wrote: post #39

Nice. I can imagine certain ISPs (that I will not shame by name) won't be very happy right now. This really throws a wrench in some proxy models. Good riddance.

Please do name and shame. This would benefit everyone.

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

#77

Post by arethuza »

seanw444 wrote: post #73
M2Ys4U wrote: 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…

> 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.

They aren't immutable, but they can only be changed by Parliament:

"the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution"

https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/sovereignty/

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

#78

Post by denton-scratch »

seanw444 wrote: post #73
M2Ys4U wrote: 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…

> 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.

The only constitution that the UK has consists of Acts of Parliament. So I don't know why it should seem odd; the US courts can't strike clauses of the US Constitution, and the UK courts can't strike Acts.

Amusingly, the UK government is currently trying to pass an Act to the effect that black is equivalent to white, i.e. that Rwanda is a safe country to which asylum seekers can be sent. This is analogous to the State of Indiana trying to legislate that the value of Pi shall be 3.2. You can't legislate a fact.

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

#80

Post by mobiuscog »

willmadden wrote: post #74
stranded22 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK DOES NOT WANT TO LEAVE THE ECHR. Select people in the government want to, not the whole of UK.

The coverage I heard on the BBC and NPR in the States about Brexit and UK public sentiment was a complete inversion of reality. I'm reluctant to believe anyone telling me what the UK wants.

Nobody really knows what public sentiment is in the UK, because nobody is asking. They're all just telling the people what they 'want'.

The sample sizes for any polls are tiny, and the areas/people that are sampled are not comprehensive.

It's fairly likely that the people (or a majority of) want the Tories out, as all sides are suggesting that and it's about the only consensus we see.

Brexit was such a mess of misinformation and rushed voting, on something that the majority of people had no idea 'what' they were really voting for, that it should never have been taken as binding - and it probably wouldn't have been if the remain vote won.

At this point, it's unclear if the UK will start to even recover in the next 5 years, or just keep getting worse.

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