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.
Yup, that's it.
And so, where is the problem?... Your message is scanned. If it is illegitimate you can't send it. What is the problem?
How will that initial scan take place? On your device, or sent to a server? Once you give the authorities that ability, will they stop at CSAM, or will they flag anti-israel content as well?
The government doesnt get to read every message I send and see if they deem it sendable or not. Thats the problem
If you think this would stop at CSAM then you're naive.
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.
These same people are at the same time taking away freedom of speech to support a genocide. How do I know they won't scan for pro Palestine content?
They scanned your message and found you were critical of Israel, a team has been sent to your location to resolve the issue.
That's a fair clarification but hardly meaningful, and arguably much worse.