{{page>Templates:Secularization}} ~~Title:Chat Control~~ [[Politics]]/[[European Union]]/[[Legislature]]/\\ Chat Control Chat Control is a proposed piece of legislation that would force messaging providers to install backdoors into their encryption methods, so that governments can access the contents of all and every correspondence. Ostensibly, the goal is to combat child sexual abuse, but it conveniently leaves out the implications of what it means to give a government full, unrestricted access to 100% of its citizen's conversation.\\ \\ Therefore, the "Biggest Letdown of the Year 2025" award goes to the [[European Union]], which has been swayed by companies - companies which successfully identified that laymen //will// forget all sense of rationality when they hear "child sexual abuse". Knowing this, companies are now pushing for an end of secrecy of correspondece, a fundamental security given to us by wise men who learned from the Second World War and understand what government overreach is, and how it threatens democracy. Update: The above proposal did not pass, so we are now in the "try to reword/minimally change the proposal to say something similar until it passes" phase of political legislation-pushing. Exactly how it is changed is not relevant for the things I want to talk about on this page. ====== Introduction ====== The exact implications of Chat Control are that any online correspondence (ie. conversations on WhatsApp, E-Mail, Signal, Telegram, Discord, etc.) are sent to the government as copies before they are sent to the intended recipient. This means a message will be sent twice. In both cases, the messages are encrypted - a message will be sent to the government with encryption, and it will send the message to the intended recipient encrypted as well. Nobody outside of you, the intended recipient and, well, the government will be able to read the messages. But, crucially, it means that the government will be able to read the messages. //Everything//. If you remember East Berlin and how agents at the post office opened, read, and then resealed letters sent between people to keep detailed profiles on 100% of the population - the Chat Control legislation is everything you need to make that a reality. In fact, since this is digital, no opening/closing is required and everything can be condensed using advanced algorithms or even AI, it would be naive to think that the government //wouldn't//. The goal of laws like "secrecy of the mail" is to make it impossible for such a thing to even be possible. The makers of these kinds of laws, back in the day, knew, that no government should ever be trusted with not spying on its people at such a scale. So instead of trusting the government to "please don't do the evil", they just declared that it should be illegal for anyone to open anyone's letters, for whatever reason. They knew that if the government was given the option to open letters at all, that such would be too much of an invitation to just do it with //every// letter. Therefore: No opening of letters //at all//. By one way or another, Chat Control levers away end-to-end encryption. Sure, the transfer between you and the government, and the transfer between you and the recipient are both technically still end-to-end encrypted, but it is now amputated to make the encryption fail at the exact task it is meant to do: To prevent illegitimate and unethical access to someone's messages. ===== 1. Proportionality ====== As a society, we generally //want// to let everyone live the way they want. Government surveillance has aspects that are inherently contradictory to this premise - however, there are areas in which governmental precautions are necessary to maintain law and order, and to protect individuals from abuse. This is typically seen as a tradeoff: Cameras in high-risk areas, such as train stations, are an acceptable restriction on privacy if it means reducing the risk of assaults. But, cameras with facial tracking and large databases to track citizen movement restrict privacy much more than necessary, and the additional reduction in assault risk are not worth the harm done by such automated systems. This is called "proportionality". Restrictions in freedom, safety or privacy are only acceptable insofar that the restrictions serve a higher imperative. The exact value of that imperative must be assessed, and the restrictions be finely tuned to be as unrestrictive as possible while still satisfying that imperative. The difference in restrictiveness can be seen all the time in the public: At a soccer stadium in Germany, pre-entrance pat-downs are the default, and security is on site. At a courthouse or the airport, proper inspections of human and carriage, complete with metal detection and X-Rays is normal, as these are more critical infrastructure and higher-value targets. Grocery stores come with cameras only, maybe a store detective. Concerts get security at levels comparable to soccer games. Open air, public events, due to their open nature, do not typically have pat-downs at the entrance, but a considerable guard presence is good practice. It should go without saying that abolishing secrecy of correspondence altogether is proportionate for pretty much nothing. The restriction of privacy being discussed is virtually limitless and comes with privacy and security concerns that are indefensible. Before all online correspondence is laid open to the government, the country should rather just shut down the internet. If the threat is as large as to make you consider abolishing privacy as we know it, shutting down the internet in your country is the better solution that does less damage. We are prepared for cases where people cannot be trusted with their communications. Laws give courts the power to issue wiretaps for individuals where it is believed that a wiretap is proportional. Either to prove that they have already done something bad, or in case they are about to do something bad. But, importantly, the natural restriction here is that wiretapping is always only for one individual, is not centralized and requires lengthy court proceedings. Wiretaps are expensive and done only when absolutely necessary. Its non-centralized structure makes the process intentionally slow. There are a lot of checks and balances in place before and after a wiretap is issued. All this means that a bad actor is //not capable// of weaponizing this system at scale. You can get one or two wiretaps in, but its non-centralized structure means you cannot ever get hundreds or even thousands of people at once. But, it works fast in reverse - if fraudulent wiretaps are found, they can be terminated extremely quickly and undo or stop a lot of damage overnight. Chat Control circumvents all that. It means that, now, everyone is centrally wiretapped by default, and is at the mercy of their government to (1) not get databreached (2) not turn hostile against its citizens (3) not use the wiretaps to profile its citizens (4) use the data to engage in discrimination or (5) get any worse ideas. Governments are powerful and can do all kinds of things to citizens it doesn't like. The people who invented secrecy of correspondence laws did it intentionally to limit the government's ability to do harm in case the government ever turns hostile. And governments do turn hostile - for many people, the government already is: Whether you're gay, trans, of a certain religion, of a certain color or criticize the government, for a lot of people this is very relevant when talking about the government. In some countries, things like these are illegal and will get you jailed - or burned. In some countries, criticizing the current administration may result in you getting fired from your job. Additionally, companies will probably get wedged into the data pool, regardless of how much we are promised that they will totally not. Companies should //not// get detailed lifestyle data of every citizen. In the worst case, your conversations might leak into private hands. A data breach, corruption, anything can happen and the public will see every chat of every person ever. A resentful ex, pissed off coworker, anyone who doesn't like you and has at least a little bit of motivation to actually do something about it could now get their hands on every secret you ever held. If you think your neighbor doesn't need to know every detail of your personal life, think again. This is so much worse. In short: Child safety is a reasonable concern to be worried about, but casually flinging away all privacy is not a proportionate solution considering the inherent risks and problems that come with such a system. Proportionate solutions would be parental and public child abuse awareness campaigns, better tools for parents to monitor and moderate their children's virtual life and more funding and staffing for federal child safety institutions to properly investigate and prosecute incidents of suspected child abuse. More solutions could be support networks for both victims and perpetrators, destigmatization and various other public relations efforts to make it easier for perpetrators to admit they have a problem, seek help and/or self-report. As a last word: There is a painful irony in this whole plot. Conversation of child abuse typically talks about a stranger on the internet seeking out vulnerable children online and trying to build rapport. If anything ever comes from Chat Control, it will be a widespread realization amongst the populace that the child abusers are not random strangers - abusers are all amongst us. They are people your child knows and is close to. Your husband. The child's uncle. Your mother. Odds are you are the abuser yourself. Anyone in your family or extended family. Or your local clergy, I guess. Child abuse will be found where people have access to children - so that's not a random stranger online whose chatlogs in case of an incident will be the first thing the police checks. It will happen primarily inside the family - //especially// parents - or any occupations close to children. ===== 2. Responsibility ===== Western society values individualism. Communal institutions are mostly limited to what's efficient and convenient - ie. kindergarten and school - but even these are geared towards preparing a child for living individually. As such, our society does what I will call "delegation of responsibility". The commune is not responsible for everything your child does. Your child is viewed as "yours" and, until it reaches maturity, the child is primarily //your// responsibility. One really dumb example would be roads. Roads are dangerous, as they have cars on them. The reason we don't build walls around every piece of road, to protect children, is because the responsibility of protecting the child's safety is delegated to the parent. As the parent, it is your job to make sure that your kid won't run into traffic. I bet you can already see where I'm going to go with this. If you agree with this individualized approach to parenting, then it is the parent's responsibility to guarantee the child's safety online. To do that, parents are given executive control over their child's belongings and activities, and all of the tools necessary for a parent to make absolutely sure that their child online is not at risk of abuse. "Parents" are the real and true proportionate solution to child safety online. If you agree with how children are raised in western society, then parents are all we need (in an ideal world). ---- If you want, continue reading on [[Chat Control (Level 2)]]