Cops have alternative means to access encrypted messages, court says.
AutoTL;DR
bot account
link
fedilink
English
28M

🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

Ultimately, users’ multiple court challenges failed, sending the case before the ECHR while Telegram services seemingly tenuously remained available in Russia.

Essentially, the government believed that FSB staff’s “duty of discretion” would prevent any intrusion on private life for Telegram users as described in the ECHR complaint.

Seemingly most critically, the government told the ECHR that any intrusion on private lives resulting from decrypting messages was “necessary” to combat terrorism in a democratic society.

However, privacy advocates backed up Telegram’s claims that the messaging services couldn’t technically build a backdoor for governments without impacting all its users.

The European Information Society Institute (EISI) and Privacy International told the ECHR that even if governments never used required disclosures to mass surveil citizens, it could have a chilling effect on users’ speech or prompt service providers to issue radical software updates weakening encryption for all users.

The ruling “strikes a blow to authoritarian measures that seek to undermine fundamental rights protections in the digital age,” Ioannis Kouvakas, senior legal officer for Privacy International, told Ars.


Saved 75% of original text.

Create a post

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.


Guidelines for submissions:
  • Where possible, post the original source of information.
    • If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
  • Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
  • Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
  • Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
  • Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.


For US News, see the US News community.


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 21 users / day
  • 81 users / week
  • 175 users / month
  • 707 users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 2.61K Posts
  • 14.8K Comments
  • Modlog