For Your Eyes Only: A Look into the Legal Feasibility of Exceptional Access to End-to-End Encrypted Messages

Modern messaging applications have revolutionized the world of interpersonal communications. They allow us to seamlessly communicate with people across the globe. These platforms, whose infrastructure operates on the internet, secure their communications through cryptography with most of them providing end-to-end encryption. This means that no one except the participants of the communications can access these messages, not even the platforms themselves. This poses a problem for law enforcement who then face hindrances in accessing those messages for investigative purposes. As a result, law enforcement agencies and governments across the world have been calling on these platforms to provide ways to facilitate lawful exceptional access to these communications. While the intentions behind lawful exceptional access may be noble, facilitating such mechanisms in end-to-end encrypted communications can create more problems than it seeks to solve. I will assess some of these legal problems in my thesis. More specifically, I will look at the economic, constitutional, and evidentiary concerns posed by facilitating lawful exceptional access to end-to-end encrypted messages. By understanding the basics of cryptography and how it is used in end-to-end encrypted messaging, we will see how messaging platforms may be inclined to leave Canada instead of complying with the exceptional access mandate. By assessing these technological mechanisms against the Canadian constitutional law, we will see that facilitating lawful exceptional access may be unconstitutional as violating the right against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We will also see that exceptional access will compromise the integrity and authentication provided by end-to-end encrypted messages which may further weaken the evidentiary value accorded to these messages. The takeaway from this thesis is that introducing exceptional access mechanisms in end-to-end encrypted messaging would go against the interests of law enforcement. To ensure that cryptography does not impede police investigations, law enforcement should focus on alternative investigative techniques which do not compromise the embedded security mechanisms of these messaging platforms, which have become ubiquitous across the world.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Laws (LLM)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Law

Grantor

Law

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Singh, Sanjampreet

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Laidlaw, Emily Buchanan

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Hagen, Gregory Ralph
• Christian, Gideon
• Laidlaw, Emily Buchanan

• Privacy
• Cybersecurity
• End-to-end Encryption
• Digital Evidence
• Constitution
• Cryptography
• Charter
• Law and Economics
• Code and the Law
• Decentred regulation
• Intermediary

Statement dc:rights

• Unless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/50017

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/122424