Dispatches from the future The first year of Chat Control
This thought exercise imagines the consequences of the European Union passing a proposal to scan all photos and videos sent by people for potential child abuse.
The quotations are based on real statements made by the attributed person, but presented out of their original contexts. Their original contexts are linked.
Brussels — The Child Sexual Abuse Regulation went into effect today in the European Union. The law is seen as the EU enlisting an unexpected partner: the big tech companies it fined previously for not being private enough.
Industry adoption of end-to-end encrypted messaging technology allowed businesses and governments to communicate digitally with less concern about data leaks. The security came with a tradeoff of increased difficulty for law enforcement to investigate potential crimes.
End-to-end encryption works in part by the sender and recipient exchanging unique keys to decrypt each other’s messages. Introducing an additional decryption key for a third-party is possible and could allow law enforcement to read intercepted messages. However, the challenge of securing additional keys from also being used by adversaries prevented the technique from being used.
