Brussels faces privacy crossroads over encryption backdoors

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/11/eu_chat_control/

by jjgreen • 10 months ago

96 31 10 months ago

skeezyboy4• 10 months ago

If passed, the legislation would require encrypted app makers ... to find ways to enforce such scanning – something they have neither the ability nor the desire to do.

100% they could add client side scanning, why do they think its impossible?

Eddy_Viscosity2• 10 months ago

Perhaps its more along the line of it being impossible to have privacy if privacy invading scanning is required. Its impossible to have secure encryption if there is a requirement to be not secure so that every message can be read by any government that wants to.

graemep• 10 months ago

What apps can access can be restricted by the OS.

All you need to do to avoid it would be to encrypt outside the app, something most people would not bother to do, but criminals would be motivated to do.

skeezyboy4• 10 months ago

whats that got to do with whatsapp scanning the photo youre about to send?

xoa• 10 months ago

>"something they have neither the ability nor the desire to do."
100% they could add client side scanning, why do they think its impossible?

I think you've misread that sentence. It's saying that they don't have the ability right now, as-in this is not a feature they've written in their software, and that further they do not wish to do so (in the same way that Apple did not want to write a backdoor for the FBI previously). Obviously as a matter of programming of course backdoors can be written and have been. But software developers don't want to be forced at gun point to do so like the EU proposes, which seems perfectly understandable.

And fwiw with open source software it actually would be arguable that they "don't have the ability" on a more technical level since that couldn't actually be enforced on the users and the EU's jurisdiction ends at its borders. Obviously many of the most popular messengers are proprietary, but not all. And even for the proprietary vendors that probably does factor into their arguments, as it'd put them at a commercial disadvantage.

lupusreal• 10 months ago

They can't do it without false positives stochastically decrypting perfectly legal conversations without a warrant or any sort of due process. Of course, the EU elites don't care, but the leadership of Signal/etc obviously do.

rightbyte• 10 months ago

Of course, the EU elites don't care

Oh they do. They are excempted.

raverbashing• 10 months ago

Cool are you happy to run a hash of all your files and if it matches a certain hash you're accused of a crime?

BTW the hash is a CRC32 one

whatevaa• 10 months ago

Wait until you get accussed of shit because of false positive. Happened in the story with Google and photo of boy to a doctor, Google refused to revoke it's automated crap even when false positive was proven.

Insanity• 10 months ago

EU taking a page out of China's playbook, after years of 'complaining' about what China was doing, is kind of wild. And sad.

anonzzzies• 10 months ago

It is a few lobbying entities and many non tech politicians. Who trust other companies to inform them who are in lobbyist pockets.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos2• 10 months ago

The same ideology runs both.

rcruzeiro• 10 months ago

How so? Do you have sources or is this a matter of opinion?

nakamoto_damacy2• 10 months ago

I understand Brussels is the de facto capital of the EU in terms of the EU institutions located there. One random association that came up when I read this is that Brussels is where the Session team is located (Session is the P2P version of Signal) and I'm sure they have a stake in this. Just not sure if they're involved in lobbying against encryption backdoors or just watching it unfold like the rest of us.

I'm one of those people who over-share and never comfortable keeping secrets (other than login credentials) while also being paranoid that we are relying on a certificate authority based system that's supposed to protect us but is fundamentally designed to enable state surveillance - a suspicion I've always had despite certificate transparency, pinning, etc) - You can downvote me for having this suspicion, but it won't make me more trusting of the security theater business.

Jaxan• 10 months ago

Over-sharing is compatible with privacy. Privacy means that you are in control of who knows what about you!

nakamoto_damacy2• 10 months ago

That's a defensible perspective.

coderatlarge• 10 months ago

seems to me this alone is a show-stopper besides all the other terrible implications:

“the best estimates show around a 10 percent false positive rate for client-side scanning – which could see a huge number of people accused of crimes they didn't commit.”

ben_w• 10 months ago

10% is massive regarless, but of what? 10% of messages being false positive flags would mean almost everyone getting flagged within a day.

Upsetting statistic for other reasons: Even if it's "10% of all flags are false, 90% are correct", if there's also no false negatives, then the 10% false positives alone gets you to about the current total incarceration rate — offenders are estimated to be a few % of the population, prison population is about 0.1% of the total population.

Spivak• 10 months ago

10% of messages flagged, which ought to be a minuscule number given nothing other than the sheer volume of messages.

ChrisArchitect• 10 months ago

Germany is not supporting ChatControl – blocking minority secured

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45209366

Chat Control Must Be Stopped

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45173277

Brussels faces privacy crossroads over encryption backdoors

Related Stories