Chat Control May Finally Be Dead: European Court Rules That Weakening Encryption Is Illegal!
tuta.com
In a legal blow, it looks like Chat Control may not roll out client-side scanning. A huge win for privacy advocates!

The EU Court ruled that “Backdoors may also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously compromise the security of all users’ electronic communications. The Court takes note of the dangers of restricting encryption described by many experts in the field.” Any requirement to build in backdoors to encryption protocols for law enforcement agencies could also be taken advantage of by malicious actors.

The EU Court of Human Rights’ also builds on their acknowledgment that “mass surveillance does not appear to have contributed to the prevention of terrorist attacks, contrary to earlier assertions made by senior intelligence officials.”

As the EU Commision’s Chat Control Bill directly targets undermining secure end-to-end encryption, it now looks to be in trouble. In its current version, the Chat Control bill would require the scanning of content on your personal devices, including that which is sent via end-to-end encrypted messenger apps or encrypted email. At some point, providers would be required to either break this encryption to allow the scanning of content or scan content once it has been decrypted and is readable.

On February 13th, Europe received an early Valentine’s gift from the European Court of Human rights when they banned any laws that aims to weaken end-to-end encryption. This ruling is a major stumbling block for the EU Chat Control Bill, but does it really mean that Chat Control is dead? There are many reasons why Chat Control should never become law, we’ve collected the turn of events and steps you can take to help prevent this dangerous bill from ever being passed!

    • baru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      10 months ago

      I think they made a mistake though, it’s not the EU court, it’s the European court, ECHR.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        10 months ago

        Yes but it’s mandatory to respect the European Court of Human Rights in EU. So it counts for all of EU. But not for instance UK.

        • elmicha@feddit.deEnglish
          8·
          10 months ago

          Why not for the UK? It’s a founding member state.

          The court has jurisdiction amongst the member states of the Council of Europe which includes almost every country in Europe except for Vatican City, Belarus and Russia.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            I am pretty sure part of Brexit is that it allows UK to not follow the court orders. Because they already have practices that are contrary to it, for instance on surveillance. But It’s a requirement to be a member of the EU. So there is no longer anything AFAIK that can punish UK for not following the court. In this regard UK was already, when they were still a member of EU, in conflict with these conditions.

            • elmicha@feddit.deEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              As I understand it, this European Court of Human Rights has nothing to do with the EU.

              This article is about the international court of the Council of Europe (not of the European Union). For the EU’s judicial branch, see Court of Justice of the European Union. For the supreme court of the EU in matters of Union law, see European Court of Justice.

              Everybody and their grandma is in the Council of Europe, except for Vatican City, Belarus and Russia. And the UK was a founding member of the Council of Europe, so their leaving the EU shouldn’t change a thing regarding this court.

  • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    37·
    10 months ago

    That is so typically Swedish, to mix up the words “take” and “make” when talking about decisions. You make decisions in English, whereas you take them in Swedish.

    • faercolEnglish
      30·
      10 months ago

      It’s not Swedish specific though. In French it’s the same, you “take” a decision

      • KrokanteBamischijf@feddit.nlEnglish
        16·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, most western European languages actually.

        Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian… Though most of these languages alternate between “taking a decision” and using a form of “to decide”.

        German seems to be the exception. They just had to be different. Guess that’s that German precision for ya, they have to “hit their decisions” otherwise they won’t count.

            • Scribbd@feddit.nlEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              Huh. Misschien zat ik vast in een Dunglish vertaalslag.

              Edit: Snelle Google laat zien dat we zeker later tot een besluit kunnen komen. We laten ze ook af en toe vallen. We nemen, geven en breken deze ook.

          • Da Bald Eagul@feddit.nlEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            We also take decisions. “Besluit nemen”. But we also make them… “Een keuze maken” (though this is a different noun, more akin to choice, so I don’t know if it counts). Our language is weird.

            • Scribbd@feddit.nlEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              We also “drop” decisions, which means the total opposite of what you would think.

              It means a decision has been made.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    The ECHR ruling is good news (and there was already a post about it in this community and many others, a week ago, from a reputable publication), but this post about that news is actually spam for a company selling a snakeoil privacy product thinly disguised as news.

    It’s worth taking note of the details of the court’s ruling in the context of Tuta’s architecture: this ruling specifically is not about when police demand that services like tuta use their capability to bypass encryption for specific users, which the architecture of services like Tuta very conveniently makes easy for them to do. Instead, it is about when authorities try to mandate that better-designed systems move to a tuta-like architecture to make targeted surveillance easy. Which makes Tuta’s use of this particular news for advertising purposes even more disgusting.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    Backdoors may also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously compromise the security of all users’ electronic communications.

    Yeah, and usually those “criminal networks” are, in fact, governments.

    • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
      24·
      10 months ago

      For once, it seems like the right people were involved in this resolution.

      What the court says is a pretty standard opinion in cybersecurity, you can’t have “safe backdoors”. We could have had some lobbying bullshit like the usual but this time the common sense won.

    • merde alors@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      there is no “stereotypical European”. It’s not even a federation like U.S.

      Consider the differences between somebody from California and Texas. And now, consider the differences between somebody from Hungary and Holland or Greece and Germany.

      Not even a common language!

      After Brexit there’s no justification for speaking English yet they mostly communicate in English.

      • Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        After Brexit there’s no justification for speaking English yet they mostly communicate in English.

        Republic of Ireland is still an EU member, so the EU is still obligated to treat it as an EU language.

        Also, the EU is quite rational and english isn’t going anywhere even if Ireland bailed since it’s the lowest common denominator as far as foreign languages go.