"Is that really what the court is saying in this case though? I mean, they had the testimony of the girl herself plus the guy's web browser history."
The posts against the decision are only on the single issue of encryption. Change encryption to a "gun". You can legally own a gun. You can use that gun for legal purposes. But when you use the gun for an illegal purpose, it figures into the crime.
In this case the pervert was a child pornographer. He used encryption to keep from being caught, so a legal tool was used to conceal illegal acts. He had something to hide and the tool to hide it becomes an issue.
Change the illegal act to spying, and that encryption was part of showing guilty intent as in this trial. It seems self evident that a judge would allow the prosecution to use it as a part of their case to show intent to hide the guilty act.
This completely misses (and misrepresents) the point. It's not that the court took into account that he *had* used the encryption to conceal his crime -- and from the article, it sounds as if they did not or could not establish that -- it's that the mere fact that he *had* the encryption software was used "as evidence of criminal intent". That's completely inexcusable, and by the very same standard almost all of us could be shown to have "evidence of criminal intent".