ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

One of the awful things about this proposed legislation is that what I quoted you saying is not true. Software like PGP is easy to use, and criminals already do. The government has absolutely no possibility of breaking RSA the way things are now, and as such scanning all messages will do nothing other than prove more definitively that criminals are still beyond their gavel. In reality, the only individuals who will get spied on are regular people who don't open their terminal just to send a text; exactly the people who should not be spied on in the first place.

When the government realizes this invasive legislature is ineffective, they will probably crack down even harder. After all, what we are willing to accept from rulers has by the looks of it already increased dramatically. I wonder if it at some point it becomes illegal simply to posses encryption software on your personal devices, perhaps even possession of prime numbers that could theoretically be used in modern encryption. How far will the government go to take this illegal math from you?

This is literally, and provably, untrue. For example:

The Soviet Union: The Bolsheviks initially proclaimed that "the arming of the working people" was essential to prevent "restoration of the power of the exploiters". It was only later that they restricted private gun ownership.

The Nazis: Contrary to popular gun rights narratives, Nazi gun laws actually relaxed restrictions for most Germans while targeting specific groups. Sometimes authoritarianism is the same as populism.

Rwanda: Prior to the genocide, the government systematically distributed weapons to local administrators and militia groups while ensuring targeted populations remained defenseless.

Myanmar: Armed civilian resistance groups formed, but the were essentially wiped out by the overwhelming advantages in air power and heavy weaponry that an actual organized military had. The firearms were useless. Arguably, worse than useless as those who fought back died in large numbers.

Venezuela: The regime armed its supporters while systematically removing weapons from the general population. The population was well armed, they just couldn't fight back against an organized government response.

But it is not even dismantling privacy. ChatControl would run client-side and only report what's deemed illegal. Almost all communications are legal, and almost all of the legal communications wouldn't be reported to anyone at all. They would stay private.

The problem I see is that the "client-side scanner" has to be opaque to some extent: it's fundamentally impossible to have an open source list of illegal material without sharing the illegal material itself. Meaning that whoever controls that list can abuse it. E.g. by making the scanner report political opponents.

This is a real risk, and the reason I am against ChatControl.

But it isn't dismantling privacy per se.

EDIT: I find it amazing how much I can be downvoted for saying that I am against ChatControl, but that argument X or Y against it is invalid. Do we want an echo chamber to complain about the principle, or do we want to talk about what is actually wrong with ChatControl?

It's nice to say "those politicians are morons who don't understand how it works", but one should be careful to understand it themselves.

No they haven't. Our system of checks and balances has. At no point has there been a civil war in which the US's citizens attempted to fight back against the US military. If there were, the citizens would lose without even presenting a challenge.

Unlike which country? The US I presume? I see very much a lack of any revolutions in the US, and the most resistance done in the past few decades was done by people with no weapons.

I'd say most revolution-like movements of any kind in the US since the Civil War happened without weapons.