this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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Privacy
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Wasn’t the plan for the messenger to scan for explicit material before the messages were sent (and encrypted)?
I'm going off of a article by TechRadar, but essentially: yes. This isn't about breaking encryption as I initially thought, though that seems to have been the goal when the same law was proposed (and rightfully rejected) in 2022. Rather, the new revision is about making encryption utterly pointless through the virtue of scanning all messages on your device, as you suggested. At least that's my read on the situation.
And so, where is the problem?... Your message is scanned. If it is illegitimate you can't send it. What is the problem?
What if they decide tomorrow that critisising the government is unlawful? That you get arrested for being LGBTQ? Send "Free Palestine" at your friends and have cops at your door?
If they allow this scanning, they just need to edit a text file to immediately flag thousands for having certain beliefs.
Besides, the real criminals will just move encryption to a different level or find different ways to bypass this.
Ultimately, there's only one solution for governments. That is to ban all encryption. And hopefully that's something we never see happening.