Backdoors That Let Cops Decrypt Messages Violate Human Rights, EU Court Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users' messages. This ruling came after Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSS), began requiring Telegram to share users' encrypted messages to deter 'terrorism-related activities' in 2017, ECHR's ruling said. In the end, the ECHR concluded that the Telegram user's rights had been violated, partly due to privacy advocates and international reports that corroborated Telegram's position that complying with the FSB's disclosure order would force changes impacting all its users.

The 'confidentiality of communications is an essential element of the right to respect for private life and correspondence,' the ECHR's ruling said. Thus, requiring messages to be decrypted by law enforcement 'cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.' 'Weakening encryption by creating backdoors would apparently make it technically possible to perform routine, general, and indiscriminate surveillance of personal electronic communications,' the ECHR's ruling said. '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.'

Martin Husovec, a law professor who helped to draft EISI's testimony, told Ars that EISI is 'obviously pleased that the Court has recognized the value of encryption and agreed with us that state-imposed weakening of encryption is a form of indiscriminate surveillance because it affects everyone's privacy.' EISI's Husovec told Ars that ECHR's ruling is 'indeed very important,' because 'it clearly signals to the EU legislature that weakening encryption is a huge problem and that the states must explore alternatives.' If the Court of Justice of the European Union endorses this ruling, which Husovec said is likely, the consequences for the EU's legislation proposing scanning messages to stop illegal content like CSAM from spreading 'could be significant,' Husovec told Ars. During negotiations this spring, lawmakers may have to make 'major concessions' to ensure the proposed rule isn't invalidated in light of the ECHR ruling, Husovec told Ars. Europol and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) said in a statement: 'Solutions that intentionally weaken technical protection mechanisms to support law enforcement will intrinsically weaken the protection against criminals as well, which makes an easy solution impossible.'

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