Chat control will eventually pass because it’s NOT about child protection. It’s about institutional expansion masquerading as security policy. Europol stands to triple his staff and massively expand his power. An entire EU Centre will be created with ongoing funding.
Once these institutions are built, once the infrastructure exists and the budget is allocated, scaling back becomes politically impossible. We’ve seen this pattern before. The Patriot Act. And the question will be: “what else can we do with it?”
This is how mission creep works: build the infrastructure for one purpose, then discover - conveniently - that it can serve many others. Today’s is CSAM. Tomorrow it’s “extremist” content monitoring.
This is securitocracy in action.
A heartbreaking injustice.
Keonne Rodriguez has been sentenced to 5 years in prison and fined $250,000 for creating Samourai Wallet.
The judge called privacy “anti-social,” ignoring the real threats faced by ordinary people.
Those with courage pay for the indifference of those who refuse to see how brutal this war will be.
we tolerate closed devices because they’re easy, safe, and subsidized. And because we’ve forgotten what computing freedom feels like.
Julius Caesar figured this out in 50 BC with a stick and some scratches. We are working on quantum computers and we’re still explaining why backdoors don’t discriminate between good and bad guys.
Have a great Global Encryption Day! 🙃
This is not a policy debate. It’s collective amnesia.
October 21, 2025
Yes, Signal uses AWS. Yes, that’s ironic. But end-2-end encryption still protects your content. The real vulnerability? Metadata, especially for targeted by state surveillance (journalists and activists in hostile environments).
That’s why proposal like Chat Control are so dangerous: they target the only thing that actually works when infrastructure can’t be trusted.
Encryption isn't a luxury. It's the last line of defense between your private life and total surveillance. Once it's gone, we won't get it back.
Europe can still choose differently.
But the window is closing.
THE PLAYBOOK IS CLEAR:
1Introduce legislation as "child protection"
2Ignore technical experts who say it's dangerous and unworkable
3Use emotional arguments to bypass rational debate
4Vote during crisis moments or procedural windows
5 Implement gradually to avoid mass backlash
🇺🇸 EARN IT ACT strips legal protection from encrypted platforms and forces messages scanning. Repeatedly reintroduced despite massive opposition.
🇦🇺 TOLA (2018): The world's first law forcing companies to build decryption capabilities. One analysis estimated adverse economic impact of AU$1 billion due to lost trust in Australian tech.
🇪🇺 Chat Control (2025): Still under debate, this proposal would mandate client-side scanning of ALL private communications before encryption, essentially installing government surveillance on every device. Over 500 scientists have called it "technically infeasible" and a "danger to democracy."
🇬🇧 Online Safety Bill (2025): The government secretly ordered Apple to break iCloud encryption globally, forcing Apple to disable Advanced Data Protection for all 35 million UK users. Signal threatened to exit the country rather than compromise its security.
🇨🇦 Canada's Bill C-2 just joined a disturbing global pattern.
Dubbed the "Strong Borders Act," Bill C-2 gives Canadian ministers sweeping power to issue secret orders forcing any electronic service provider (from telecoms to encrypted messaging apps) to grant government access to private communications. The bill could force companies to build "technical capabilities" for surveillance, potentially creating backdoors into end-to-end encryption.
Sound familiar? It should.
I still have last night’s music in my ears. But I’m also that annoying person who reminds you that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Welcome to the encryption war.
Democratic governments are systematically breaking digital privacy.
Here’s the global map of surveillance ➡️
Mass surveillance cannot protect children. Real protection requires targeted law enforcement, better platform accountability, education, and resources for identifying actual abusers, and not scanning billions of innocent messages in hopes of finding needles in haystacks.
This victory proves that citizen protest works. Hundreds of cryptography experts, digital rights organizations, and millions of concerned Europeans made their voices heard. But vigilance remains essential.
Europe must find the political will to pursue policies that actually work.
The defeat is crucial for several reasons:
- statistics show high false-positive rates in automated CSAM detection. This means innocent people would have been flagged, and authorities would have accessed countless private communications with no criminal content;
- creating backdoors in encryption doesn't just help law enforcement; it creates vulnerabilities that hackers and hostile nation states could exploit. Government and military communications were notably exempted from the proposal, highlighting that even lawmakers understood the security risks;
- a coalition of over 45,000 European businesses warned the law would destroy user trust and harm Europe's digital sovereignty, placing impossible financial burdens on smaller companies while giving Big Tech an advantage.
So… today was supposed to be the day.
Denmark’s Justice Minister, Peter Hummelgaard, wanted the EU Council to vote on ChatControl.
He failed. 🎉
But make no mistake: they’ll try again.
The proposal isn’t dead. It’s just paused.
New negotiations are already happening behind closed doors, and they’ll be back with “compromises” that sound harmless but change everything.
Because Chat Control isn’t about “safety.”
It’s about control.
This isn’t how you protect people.
This is how you build a surveillance state.
And that’s why today’s defeat matters so much.👇
I’ve been reporting on #chatcontrol proposal since 2023, together with many others across Europe. So far it hasn’t reached a majority, but the Danish presidency (strongly in favor) could shift the balance and actually force apps to scan every conversation and every photo before encryption, using unreliable AI, while government and military accounts remain exempt. A future that #signal has already said it will never accept, even if it means leaving Europe for good.
Let’s be clear: this is not about protecting children. It’s about creating a mass-surveillance infrastructure that destroys encryption and puts the privacy of 450 million EU citizens at risk. Even the EU’s own legal services admit the proposal violates fundamental rights. Germany’s Constitutional Court has already declared similar attempts at mass data retention unconstitutional. And yet, here we are again.
And we must not forget: who benefits. Independent research has shown strong lobbying behind Chat Control from companies and AI industry groups, eager to profit if Europeans’ communications are monitored 24/7. It’s no coincidence: more data to scan means more power and more money for those who build surveillance systems. Child protection is the new pretext, but the real driver is a billion-euro business.
Two key dates are around the corner:
> #October9: German ministers meet to decide their stance on Chat Control (Germany has a decisive influence and seems once again inclined to vote in favor).
> #October14: Denmark will push for a final Council vote.
We cannot allow Chat Control to become law. We cannot accept opaque algorithms deciding which private messages and photos get flagged or archived forever. We cannot let the EU break encryption.
The time to act is now.
Please visit at:
fightchatcontrol.eu/about
If I must show a government ID before speaking my heart, what remains of free speech?