back to article Belgian court says Skype must provide interception facilities

Skype has failed in its appeal against a 2016 fine in Belgium for failing to help authorities tap calls in a criminal investigation, with the court saying it must comply with the country's telecommunications laws. Last year, a court in Mechelen imposed the €30,000 fine, because Skype was unable to hand over anything more than …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ignorant Yank here. Is Belgium generally known for being anti-cryptography? And if so, when did that happen? And why? I thought they were an 'anything goes' kind of country.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Anything goes, but you have to fill in a form and provide ID first.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Is Belgium generally known for being anti-cryptography?

      Not really.

      The case is not about cryptography. It is about running a communications service and does it constitute a telecom operation as defined in law. A telecom operator in nearly all countries must provide lawful intercept, usually based on court order. The side effect of this is that you are not allowed to run a completely opaque service as an operator. Users can run it. Companies can supply software to them to do so. Telcos and Service operators cannot.

      In any case - it is old news as far as MSFT is concerned as their service is now cloud-centric and with no end-to-end encryption. So while they probably could not provide intercept on the old Skype protocol, they have no issues doing it today.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Belgium generally known for being anti-cryptography? And if so, when did that happen? And why? I thought they were an 'anything goes' kind of country.

      God no. The Flemish part, OK, but the French side of it would not stand for it, for historic reasons. The French used to be in control, but those pesky Flemish people have worked out that they are actually generating the majority of the money in the country but the French side spends most of it, and ever since the peasants have been a tad on the unruly side, resulting inmore and more attempts to clamp down (which is why the government falls over with the frequency of a tourist trying to keep up with the drinking of the average Glaswegian).

      The funny part is that Skype already IS intercepted, they just won't admit to it. Now there's an excuse of "generating a preview", but it's been quite a while since people in Germany discovered that a weblink in Skype messaging gets visited in under 10 seconds when sent (in my experience it's usually within a second).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "The funny part is that Skype already IS intercepted, they just won't admit to it.,"

        They do admit to it. It's not controversial for a phone service to be intercepted, and In most countries it's a legal requirement with a court order.

        "since people in Germany discovered that a weblink in Skype messaging gets visited in under 10 seconds when sent (in my experience it's usually within a second)."

        That would be the malware scanning taking a look before sending it on...

        1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          discovered that a weblink in Skype messaging gets visited in under 10 seconds

          That is normal as the new Skype attempts to generate a inline preview. All the other usual suspects do it too.

          Now, what else do they do with this information as well as how they relate it to you personally and how do they map it onto advertising are a different story.

          This is one of the many reasons why MSFT killed the p2p early skype protocol. It was observing how F***book, Google, etc are correlating messaging with web views in a way usable for printing money and it could not print money the same way. From that point on the days of p2p skype were numbered.

    4. inmypjs Silver badge

      "Belgium generally known for being anti-cryptography?"

      Nope, chocolate and Hercule Poirot is about it.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still better than ours want

    As long as each targetted investigation requires a warrant it's far better than Britain or America are demanding.

    I mean, Bojo would inevitably say that's okay for a tiny country because they've got few enough connections to be able to do this on a case by case basis, but that's because he can't let anything go by without a pop at funny foreigners. In reality we should all have enough court facilities for our population.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still better than ours want

      As long as each targetted investigation requires a warrant it's far better than Britain or America are demanding.

      A targetted investigation requires a warrant or court order in the U.K. There's an annual Parliamentary report on the matter that counts up their usage rates for you, and reports on cock ups, missing warrants, etc (of which there are seemingly very few).

      And for the sake of clarity, a warrant is not an order to do something, it is merely official permission to do something that is normally illegal. If I as a private individual am issued a warrant to tap my neighbours phone line (extremely unlikely circumstances) then I could do so if I wanted to.

      On the other hand a court order is something that must be obeyed; you can go to jail for not doing what you're told.

      1. gypsythief

        Re: Still better than ours want

        "A targetted investigation requires a warrant or court order in the U.K. "

        Yes. Yes it does. A targeted investigation does indeed. So, why bother targeting? Way too much work, old boy. Let's just introduce the Snooper's Charter and slurp it. Slurp it all!!! Why, there's nothing targeted about that!

        So yes, unless Belgium has its own Snooper's Charter, it is indeed better than what Britain or America are up to.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Still better than ours want

          "Let's just introduce the Snooper's Charter and slurp it"

          Or just provide the facilities for the Americans to it for us via Echelon...

          1. JimboSmith Silver badge

            Re: Still better than ours want

            Or just provide the facilities for the Americans to it for us via Echelon...

            Oh come on I mean It's not like BT have got cables running into Menwith Hill carrying 100,000 telephone calls concurrently. Nor that (in the late 90's) they'd admit to this and send evidence and their then head of emergency planning (as a witness) to court and admit this. The case was an appeal by two convicted female trespassers into the American Spy base. BT had to send another solicitor to withdraw evidence submitted and shut up their own witness. That fiasco earned a rebuke for the company and the witness from the judge who said:

            "If I had a burglar alarm system, I would now think twice about having it operated by BT"

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Still better than ours want

        "A targetted investigation requires a warrant or court order in the U.K."

        One issue here is the issuing of a warrant by some agency other than a court. For instance if someone goes to Rudd for a warrant because someone's using hashtags she'll issue it without a second thought (in fact, without a first thought for obvious reasons).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still better than ours want

      As long as each targetted investigation requires a warrant it's far better than Britain or America are demanding.

      My dear boy, you have no idea just how corrupt Belgium is (admittedly still less of a mess than Malta at present, but it's vile). A warrant requirement is not really a barrier.

  3. Alister
    Coat

    Microsoft classified as a telco, so told to cough up. It may gaufre an appeal

    Don't know what you are waffling on about...

    1. frank ly

      It's how they pronounce 'go for' in Belgium.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's how they write waffle in Belgian...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Belgium is a tiny country

    Pretty easy for Microsoft, and anyone else caught in this net, to simply not offer Skype and any other services that Belgium wants to regulate.

    So assuming they chase all the US players away, how do they plan to go after services based in countries without extradition treaties such as Russia and whose owners don't have any legal presence in Belgium and thus can ignore the courts with impunity, like Telegram's app?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Belgium is a tiny country

      Bzzt - correction. Your sentence is incomplete.

      "Belgium is a tiny country and is part of the EU"

      As a matter of fact, it hosts most of the functions. Belgium is a test market for a lot of things, exactly because it's small with a mixed population. This is, for instance, why cars are cheaper there. A side effect of that is that things that happen in Belgium that are not a function of the eternal language conflict have a nasty habit of migrating into EU level problems, so if I were Microsoft I'd use those lobbyists that they already infested Brussels with and deal with this pretty pronto or it could get very ugly..

      .. which would greatly amuse me. But I do have a bad sense of humour :).

      1. chivo243 Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Belgium is a tiny country

        "Belgium is a tiny country and is part of the EU"

        Belgium is the border between The Netherlands and France!

        .. which would greatly amuse me. But I do have a bad sense of humour :).

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Belgium is a tiny country

      This is likely part of an eventual Europe wide reconsideration of OTT services as telcos. That includes Apple (FaceTime), WhatsApp (everything), Facebook (Messenger), Google (surely they have a message service somewhere but I don't bother learning the names because hey keep throwing them away), Instagram, Line, Snapchat, BBM, etc.

      If that happens then the newly anointed Telcos will have to strike a balance between complying with LI laws and their current marketing / public positions vis a vis "privacy". Making a big fuss about privacy now may suit the public mood, but may put them out of business later when their privacy conscious users flee once they introduce LI systems.

      Withdrawing from lil ol Belgium is one thing, from the whole of Europe dents the bottom line quite a bit. Belgium has simply set a precedent...

      Skype's original peer to peer architecture is of course highly resistant to this kind of thing. An open source equivalent with no corporate backer would be very difficult to intercept. But there's no money in it for anyone, so no one organisation with sufficient marketing clout will ever promote such a thing.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Belgium is a tiny country

      "to simply not offer Skype and any other services that Belgium wants to regulate.

      No it isn't. EU law makes Geo blocking largely illegal - certainly within the EU itself. And everywhere else in the EU has similar requirements anyway.

      1. Michael Habel

        Re: Belgium is a tiny country

        If that's the case... The why does the BBC (i.e. iPlayer) do this?

        1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

          Re: why does iplaye implement geo blocking

          Because a lot of the content available is only licensed for the UK Market.

          I expect that a test case will resolve this eventually but probably not before BREXIT.

          The copyright holders of the programmes broadcast want their pound of flesh from every country where their thing is shown/streamed. The amounts vary by country.

          I foesee a time when iPlayer has no content and the service dies.

          1. Michael Habel

            Re: why does iplaye implement geo blocking

            Well the nuked Top Gear... And now their doing the same with Doctor Who*. Didn't they also lose Bake Off as well? Seems all they have left are shows about Fleamarket (Bootsales), and reprocessed homes under the B&Hammer. Yeah I don't think I'm missing much either.

            And since the last time I checked BBC4 was nothing but, bunch of repeates from >2010. Again saw all that crap before they cut the spot beam down. Thus ending my viewing of those Channels via Freesat.

            *I shall probably stop watching this nonsense after the Christmas Special. What a shame the BBC wasted such a great actor for this role.... But, this could be said of anyone post Davidson.

            That said this was One Shark too many...

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              So what stops Microsoft from spinning off Skype?

              Make it a separate company that doesn't do business in the EU, and is just very well supported by Windows. Facebook could do the same for Messenger since it is already a separate app, and so forth.

              Corporations can fight this sort of thing with corporate structure and the EU will twist themselves into knots with a lot of unintended consequences trying to go after them.

    4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Belgium is a tiny country

      "Pretty easy for Microsoft, and anyone else caught in this net, to simply not offer Skype and any other services that Belgium wants to regulate."

      ...and explain to customers why. Then let the Belgian govt. field their public's response. If it's a big issue then it'll be a big issue for the govt. If it isn't MS can quietly reintroduce the service.

  5. Dan 55 Silver badge

    It's technically impossible your honour

    Just ignore the fact that we do it already for the NSA.

  6. Martin Audley

    Seems to me that WhatsApp could happily respond by simply offering the telecommunications authorities recordings of the encrypted data flows, and saying "There you go - now you've got everything we have.. Deal with it".

    WhatsApp cannot decrypt those - and nor (even with GCHQ's supercomputers applied to the problem) could the authorities.

    Without the government banning P2P or P2C encryption (which would, obviously, kill banking) there's not really any other alternative.

    Skype, with their broken encryption, isn't used by anyone who cares about privacy anyway.

    1. TheVogon

      "Skype cannot decrypt those"

      For Skype user to Skype user they might be able to get away with that. But when they pass a call to the PSTN they would have to intercept it... Skype's model currently terminates encryption at the servers though, which is fine for most of us, but terrorists, etc would be after end-to-end encryption which would require a different design.

      Currently that's not an issue for most corporates because Skype for business terminates the secure connections from outside clients within their network and under their control. However, if they move to the Office 365 hosted Skype model then it becomes something to consider as it might be possible for say the NSA given sufficient resourcing to tap such calls / messages...

      " and nor (even with GCHQ's supercomputers applied to the problem) could the authorities."

      Bearing in mind the holes (some deliberate) we have now found in previously considered secure encryption and hashing algorithms I would not want to bet on that...

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        "For Skype user to Skype user they might be able to get away with that. But when they pass a call to the PSTN they would have to intercept it... "

        This! This is what makes Skype a comms provider. All(?) of the others tend not to have PSTN gateways.

  7. Tigra 07
    Childcatcher

    Create a technicality...

    When installing and choosing country/language Microsoft should leave Belgium off the list.

    No longer targeting customers in market = no need to bow to the court's demands (by their own admission). Microsoft just needs to release a statement criticising the law and announce they're pulling out of the market.

    Belgian customers can simply choose Germany as their country and enjoy uninterrupted access to Skype, while their anti crypto Gov take flak.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Create a technicality...

      "No longer targeting customers in market = no need to bow to the court's demands (by their own admission). "

      As mentioned further up, Belgium is part of the EU and rulings such as this have a habit of moving up the chain and becoming established as EU wide precedent. Would MS be prepared to stop offering Skype in the whole of the EU?

  8. OffBeatMammal

    I wonder if MS would have been in the same legal position - viewed as a Telco - if they'd left Skype as a P2P distributed system rather than centralizing control (and systematically ignoring their users to try and turn it into some Snapchat style social network)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't think this helps at all.

    Real criminals communicate with emojis.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Skype impenetrable encryption

    "The Microsoft-owned VoIP and messaging system operated in a peer-to-peer model at the time, making its encryption impenetrable to the company and law enforcement authorities alike."

    'Skype worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video and audio conversations.'

  11. handleoclast

    If they want the data...

    ...they can have the data.

    No problem. No problem at all. Here you go. Oodles of data.

    What's that?

    You want it decrypted?

    We don't know how to do that. But if you do, go ahead and decrypt it.

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