The international court's decision could mess up the European Commission's plans to force email and messaging services to make backdoors that would let cops decrypt users' messages.

This ruling came after Russia's spooks, the Federal Security Service (FSB), started demanding Telegram to hand over users' encrypted messages to stop "terrorist plots" in 2017, ECHR's ruling said.

 In the end, the ECHR said that the Telegram user's rights had been trampled, partly because privacy campaigners and global reports backed up Telegram's claim that following the FSB's order would affect all its users.

"The privacy of communications is a key part of the right to respect for private life and correspondence," the ECHR's ruling said. So, making messages be decrypted by cops "cannot be seen as needed in a democratic society."

Breaking encryption by making backdoors would let cops spy on personal electronic communications all the time, the ECHR's ruling said.

"Backdoors could also be used by crooks and would wreck the security of all users' electronic communications. The Court notes the dangers of limiting encryption described by many experts in the field."

EISI's law professor Martin Husovec was pleased the Court valued of encryption and agreed with us that state-made weakening of encryption is a form of snooping because it affects everyone's privacy.

Husovec said ECHR's ruling is "very important," because "it clearly tells the EU lawmakers that breaking encryption is a big problem and that the states must look for other ways."

If the Court of Justice of the European Union backs this ruling, which Husovec said is likely, the impact for the EU's law suggesting scanning messages to stop illegal stuff like CSAM from spreading "could be huge."

During talks this spring, lawmakers may have to make "big changes" to make sure the proposed rule isn't scrapped in light of the ECHR ruling, Husovec said.

Europol and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) said in a statement: "Solutions that purposely weaken technical protection to help cops will weaken the protection against criminals as well, which makes an easy solution impossible."