ECJ obstacle to mass surveillance that prioritized privacy over police access

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has made numerous decisions on data retention. As a result, general data retention is currently essentially prohibited in EU Member States.

The for us negative ECJ rulings are mainly based on violating the principles set in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Mainly the fundamental right to privacy.

So, governments are stopped by the European Court of Justice from violating the fundamental right to privacy in the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Several Member States have said that end-to-end encryption (E2E) systems should not be weakened. This is also the position of Estonia. But what is exactly meant by weakening the E2E? If the service provider, court or some other institution has the key, is the E2E weaker? Perhaps we are talking about the reluctance to technical weakening of the system? In other sense, is the door weaker if someone has the key?

This suggestion is concerning. End-to-end encryption (E2E) means that only the sender and the recipient has the key to decrypt messages.

For example, WhatsApp messages are protected by E2E. The purpose is that even the service provider company Meta (who owns Whatsapp and Facebook) can't access the messages.

Giving the key of E2E to someone else is basically another way of saying that people should send the messages directly to them. This proposal essentially suggests that messages are not only sent to your intended recipient, but also to the service provider or the court, essentially forcing everyone to "bcc" them every time people send a message.

Every single message will essentially become like a group chat, with the service provider and the court as hidden members of the group chat being able to read every single messages when necessary.

It sounds literally like mass surveillance. No wonder the European Court of Justice sees it as a breach of the fundamental right to privacy.