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Hungary Bans Encryption and Freedom v Security

If Hungary Bans Encryption, there will be winners and losers. Encryption has fallen under scrutiny in the ongoing battle to keep citizens safe. Europe, having recently fallen victim to several devastating attacks, feels particularly vulnerable.

Political leaders are seeking to find a balance between security and privacy. It is this trade-off that frames the ongoing encryption debate. Each jurisdiction is steering its own course.

In Hungary a leading parliamentarian recently proposed to ban the use of all end-to-end encryption. Fidesz is the largest faction in the Hungarian Federal Government. This proposal came from their ranks.

Currently, under Hungarian law, law enforcement are able to conduct surveillance of individuals as part of ‘counter-terrorism operations’. Whereas usually, any individually targeted surveillance would require the approval of a judge; similar to a warrant.

This legal framework, although directly challenged by the European Court of Human Rights, remains. And a ban to end-to-end encryption would be an extension of that framework. It would make mass surveillance techniques possible.

Hungary Bans Encryption and the Final Legislation

In its original form, the draft proposal included gaol time for users of end-to-end encryption. While software developers would be required to build-in backdoors for authorities.

Opposition parties did express strong objection to the criminalisation of consumers of encryption based services and applications. And this part of the legislation was dropped.

Hungary seeks to ban encryption apps to fight terrorism via @dacomms http://www.portfolio.hu/en/economy/hungary_seeks_to_ban_encryption_apps_to_fight_terrorism.31097.html …

— Szabolcs Panyi (@panyiszabolcs) 31 March 2016

Also, under the legislation originally proposed, the Government would have the ability to request decoding of encrypted messages, by service providers, on suspicion of terrorist activities amongst any users. Of course, given the nature of encryption, this would have been impossible to achieve.

The legislation that ultimately passed did not ban the use of end-to-end encryption. There was enough modification to the original legislation for that.

Indeed, Hungarian intelligence services themselves admit that, in the their work, encrypted messages are nowhere near as important as the metadata they carry. Such metadata is already collected by service providers anyway, for purposes such as billing.

The recent events in Hungary remind us that, in the ongoing battle against evil, it is important not to become that which you seek to destroy. At iceCUBED we work with cryptocurrency everyday. So, we understand the mathematics of encryption.

While we take no strong stance on this political issue, we recognise that it is ultimately an issue of philosophy, as much as it is an issue of law. To quote Nietzsche, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

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