(…) EU court says

The European Court of Human Rights does not belong to the European Union but to the Council of Europe which has nothing to do with the EU. A journalist should know that.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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 “confidentiality of communications is an essential element of the right to respect for private life and correspondence,” the ECHR’s ruling said.

The original article contains 602 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!