>Now Paris “on the whole” agrees with the draft. France welcomes both mandatory chat control and client-side scanning.
A few months ago, a broad security law was passed by the National Assembly in France. Initially, this law contained provisions, including the scanning of private messages, which were removed from the main text by a large majority of lawmakers, as it was deemed too intrusive.
The few officials (including Macron) who now claim that "France is OK with chat control" represent a minority that currently holds power in a country whose government was ousted less than two weeks ago.
There's a bunch of people organizing against those crooks on the OG Stop Killing Games discord. Just type "stopkillinggames" into Discord's invite box.
One interesting note: The group has even identified a suspected Russian spy network tied to the Russian telco MTS. MTS paid a close to $1B fine for unsavoury business in Uzbekistan [1] and is known to operate GFW and similar tech [2] in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Belarus [3] for example. The company is trying to get at people's biometrics, by posing as a KYC / Online Safety Act compliance company. [4] They probably do provide the services, but one can imagine where the data is also going.
As a parallel thread mentions, anything related to Chat Control and other Internet control things immediately becomes a target for state actors trying to undermine democracy. [5] In my opinion, it is also often initiated and pushed for by them.
> As a parallel thread mentions, anything related to Chat Control and other Internet control things immediately becomes a target for state actors trying to undermine democracy. [5] In my opinion, it is also often initiated and pushed for by them.
War is peace, isn't it ? /s
I am not against chat control if they start making public the chats of politicians. I know, it's not gonna happen. National security.
Interesting that this national law was pushed by people in an alliance around Macron: the same team which might sign the opposite for the EU. Just a drop in an ocean of nonsense, from where such a dangerous bill might emerge.
Trying to enact such complete and utter surveillance, as the whole country slowly slides into right-wing populism is an idea that is so utterly ridiculous I struggle to find the right words.
It is beyond stupid, beyond malicious. The closest I might come to describing this would be 'suicidal'.
What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance?
It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing.
Why do people think this chat control thing will be effective?
I think most people, if pressed, would share your evaluation. However, even though surveillance is always marketed and sold as a tool for law enforcement, I think the people proposing such bills are aware that it's primary use is for political control, power, and espionage.
Safety is the bait in the bait and switch. So the measure is not whether or not surveillance actually works for making people safer. But whether or not it actually works as bait.
While it's easy to start believing this is the only motive, the truth of the matter is that a lot of stupid people do crime. So even if you only catch the stupid criminals, you still catch a bunch of criminals.
And I mean _stupid_. You wouldn't believe how intensely stupid some of those people are, but read some court records and you will come away deeply surprised we are making it as a species.
But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it.
P.S. I'm not saying "stupid => does crime", please don't read that into what I said above - I'm just saying that `#("stupid and also does crime")` is a large number.
Indeed. They just again further defunded both education and youth projects. So what you say is perfectly accurate: they could not care less about children.
Part of the answer is that they think the surveillance will be magically omniscient, because it's technology they don't understand.
Part of the answer is that they think that if there's a tool they could possibly have to give law enforcement more power, they must have it.
Part of it is that they don't care so much about actual bad guys, but about exercising absolute control over the general populace.
Part of it is that they don't believe that crime can actually be eliminated, but they do believe that they have to continue to take all possible measures against it.
And part of it is just that they don't think it's politically safe for them to oppose a measure like this (similar to, but not quite the same as, the second point above).
I've had an unexpected redirect from a hacked Wordpress site in the past. One of the reasons why I will never go without an abuse blocker + NoScript on work computers. I had been trialing going without at the start of that job and lasted a few months but that incident permanently removed any latent guilt.
While true, at least in my understanding of the world there is a massive difference in people involved in CSAM and people watching porn. The latter one is probably like 80% of humans with access to internet, the first one is hopefully a tiny bit smaller. Also, people are probably very aware that the latter is widely allowed and done by mostly everyone, and the first one is highly illegal, highly enforced and morally completely wrong.
I would not mind browsing porn on my work PC. I wouldn't do it, but I would not have a very bad feeling while or after it, because so be it. I don't think my employer can fire me for that.
There is already a market for secure phones used by organized crime, this will only intensify the demand (plus another opportunity for to infiltrate them like has also happened before)
I had a similar debate with a friend of mine over a age verification law recently passed in Brazil. It mandates age verification for social media in order to restrict teenagers and children access to adult content, for example, or any other content that violates teenagers rights.
The law in question (PL2628/2022) doesn't mention CSAM or sexualized/erotic content depicting children or teenager by name. It's broader than that, it mentions that any content deemed offensive to children/teenagers, or that violates their rights as defined in the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, should be removed by social media.
My friend supports the law because he thinks it will stop 99.9% of the bad guys looking for CSAM on the internet because he believes they get their content from Instagram. I tried to explain to him the law won't do shit to stop the bad guys but instead just add more surveillance to people who aren't doing anything wrong, but he doesn't want to accept it, and even called me out saying I look like a defender of the bad guys, simply for the fact that I don't think mass surveillance and age verification of people is enough to stop wrongdoers on the internet, or to protect children.
Edward Snowden reported that some NSA officers were routinely watching and sharing people's private nudes.
It's more than just "snooping occationally". Government officials are at the end of the day strangers, and it's not their business spying on people's private lives. Not only do they intend to infringe upon our privacy in one of the most intrusive ways possible, but also at gunpoint. Think about that.
Because they know and intend to target this law against regular people, not against bad guys. They are learning from the best in this field. Targeted very harsh punishments of the random people at random times do A LOT to chill political activity in the country, make hesitant people (a majority) shut up "just in case they are next ones to be targeted". People already with history of activity which may be randomly selected for prosecution will emigrate and thus exclude themselves from political environment. And this useful for left/centrists/right, regardless of the ideology, since all of them plan on shutting down opposition as soon as they are in power.
They don’t understand the technology and think it will magically apply everywhere.
Most politicians have no idea how anything works. Electric lights are simply magic, let alone the Internet. Obviously you can pass a law to make the wizards make the magic do whatever you want, right?
Can somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this? Almost immediately, enemy State actors will have almost as complete access as the government passing the law; blackmail will become trivial; they could just subtly weaken adversaries nonstop over the years for a more patient return, etc? It just seems ridiculously dangerous. How is having a single point of failure (or handful of points of failure) for an entire country or continent defensible simply from the perspective of opsec?
> Can somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this?
This also recently came up when huntress exposed what it could do with its tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183589 and then failed to understand why this might be a bad thing.
If you have been watching the world in 2025 you know Tor is gradually becoming essential. Install the Tor Browser and search for free speech in the hidden service HTTP response dumps here: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Not censored, not safe for work, sorry.
It sounds like chat control will require Tor clients in Europe to scan traffic before it is encrypted and report material to (local?) governments. This could be enforced, on phones at least, with Android's new developer key signing requirements that are slated to be phased in one year from now (in 2026).
What if we went the other direction - push chat control but on government and rich folks? Make them fully transparent as the price of power/influence, and leave normies opaque?
The Danes are smart, but history have repeatedly proven that people are deceptive, even the seemingly trustworthy ones that hands out promises for votes.
Europeans don't get to blame the US for this. Chat Control is being widely pushed. The Europeans get to take responsibility for their own authoritarianism.
Readit News
A few months ago, a broad security law was passed by the National Assembly in France. Initially, this law contained provisions, including the scanning of private messages, which were removed from the main text by a large majority of lawmakers, as it was deemed too intrusive.
The few officials (including Macron) who now claim that "France is OK with chat control" represent a minority that currently holds power in a country whose government was ousted less than two weeks ago.
Crooks.
There's a bunch of people organizing against those crooks on the OG Stop Killing Games discord. Just type "stopkillinggames" into Discord's invite box.
One interesting note: The group has even identified a suspected Russian spy network tied to the Russian telco MTS. MTS paid a close to $1B fine for unsavoury business in Uzbekistan [1] and is known to operate GFW and similar tech [2] in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Belarus [3] for example. The company is trying to get at people's biometrics, by posing as a KYC / Online Safety Act compliance company. [4] They probably do provide the services, but one can imagine where the data is also going.
As a parallel thread mentions, anything related to Chat Control and other Internet control things immediately becomes a target for state actors trying to undermine democracy. [5] In my opinion, it is also often initiated and pushed for by them.
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s-mts-to-pay-850-million-to-s...
[2] https://www.techradar.com/news/data-leak-reveals-how-russia-...
[3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mobile-telesystems-o...
[4] (link works after joining said discord) https://discord.com/channels/1281358651470381097/14006009921...
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353056
War is peace, isn't it ? /s I am not against chat control if they start making public the chats of politicians. I know, it's not gonna happen. National security.
Interesting that this national law was pushed by people in an alliance around Macron: the same team which might sign the opposite for the EU. Just a drop in an ocean of nonsense, from where such a dangerous bill might emerge.
It is beyond stupid, beyond malicious. The closest I might come to describing this would be 'suicidal'.
It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing.
Why do people think this chat control thing will be effective?
Safety is the bait in the bait and switch. So the measure is not whether or not surveillance actually works for making people safer. But whether or not it actually works as bait.
And I mean _stupid_. You wouldn't believe how intensely stupid some of those people are, but read some court records and you will come away deeply surprised we are making it as a species.
But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it.
P.S. I'm not saying "stupid => does crime", please don't read that into what I said above - I'm just saying that `#("stupid and also does crime")` is a large number.
They could not care less about children. Kids are just a political weapon they use to create a pretext for global warrantless mass surveillance.
Part of the answer is that they think the surveillance will be magically omniscient, because it's technology they don't understand.
Part of the answer is that they think that if there's a tool they could possibly have to give law enforcement more power, they must have it.
Part of it is that they don't care so much about actual bad guys, but about exercising absolute control over the general populace.
Part of it is that they don't believe that crime can actually be eliminated, but they do believe that they have to continue to take all possible measures against it.
And part of it is just that they don't think it's politically safe for them to oppose a measure like this (similar to, but not quite the same as, the second point above).
I would not mind browsing porn on my work PC. I wouldn't do it, but I would not have a very bad feeling while or after it, because so be it. I don't think my employer can fire me for that.
I would mind about doing CSAM activities though.
The law in question (PL2628/2022) doesn't mention CSAM or sexualized/erotic content depicting children or teenager by name. It's broader than that, it mentions that any content deemed offensive to children/teenagers, or that violates their rights as defined in the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, should be removed by social media.
My friend supports the law because he thinks it will stop 99.9% of the bad guys looking for CSAM on the internet because he believes they get their content from Instagram. I tried to explain to him the law won't do shit to stop the bad guys but instead just add more surveillance to people who aren't doing anything wrong, but he doesn't want to accept it, and even called me out saying I look like a defender of the bad guys, simply for the fact that I don't think mass surveillance and age verification of people is enough to stop wrongdoers on the internet, or to protect children.
It's more than just "snooping occationally". Government officials are at the end of the day strangers, and it's not their business spying on people's private lives. Not only do they intend to infringe upon our privacy in one of the most intrusive ways possible, but also at gunpoint. Think about that.
Most politicians have no idea how anything works. Electric lights are simply magic, let alone the Internet. Obviously you can pass a law to make the wizards make the magic do whatever you want, right?
Not only the bad guys, I will jump into any software that allow me to bypass this crap.
Deleted Comment
Downsides are purely theoretical and only brought up by conspiracy theorists and academics.
(Technically correct, the best kind..)
We already had this debate once before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
The answer is that it is a bad idea.
This also recently came up when huntress exposed what it could do with its tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183589 and then failed to understand why this might be a bad thing.
Or you know crowdstrike getting rolled in a supply chain attack: https://www.ox.security/blog/npm-2-0-hack-40-npm-packages-hi...
The government wants a back door to spy on its citizens, not realizing that any back door you build is rife to be exploited by anyone.
Don't forget, Russia has trillions of dollars for bribes.
Hate to be that guy, but source?
I have zero confidence that "the Worlds least corrupt country" is actually the least corrupt.