<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/21/european-human-rights-courts-rules-that-encryption-backdoors-are-illegal-under-eu-law/>
"Well… this is an unexpected (and fun!) turn of events. The EU Commission has
spent most of the last couple of years trying to talk EU members into voting in
favor of weakened encryption, if not actual encryption backdoors. You know, for
the children.
On the table are things ranging from mandated client-side content scanning to
the compelled breaking of encryption whenever law enforcement wants access to
communications. These plans — including parallel efforts by the UK government
(which is no longer an EU member) — have attracted more opposition than
support, but that hasn’t stopped the commission from moving forward with these
efforts, even when its own legal counsel has stated these mandates would
violate EU laws.
While it’s possible (but extremely unwise) to blow off your own internal legal
guidance to get with the encryption breaking, it’s much more difficult to
ignore overriding external legal guidance that says what you’re trying to do is
blatantly illegal. You can always hire more subservient lawyers if you don’t
like what’s being said by the ones you have. But you can’t blow off the
European Court of Human Rights quite as easily.
As Thomas Claburn reports for
The Register, a long-running case involving (of
all things) the Russian government’s attempt to force Telegram to decrypt
communications has resulted in a loss that will be felt by all of the EU’s
anti-encryption lawmakers.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that laws requiring
crippled encryption and extensive data retention violate the European
Convention on Human Rights – a decision that may derail European data
surveillance legislation known as Chat Control.
The court issued a decision on Tuesday stating 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.”
Ouch. Good luck pushing anti-encryption mandates when the court has declared
them unnecessary in a democratic society. And, somehow, we have the Russian
government to thank for this turn of events."
Unfortunately the Australian government, like most governments, tends to
privilege the views of law enforcement over civil rights and therefore is also
pushing for encryption backdoors. Our former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
famously declared in 2017 that “The laws of mathematics are very commendable,
but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”. Let’s hope
civil rights advocates can use this ECHR ruling to remind the government that
rights matter.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
