What the “chat-control” bullshit is and how it’s a move to force providers and device makers to scan private messages on users’ devices before they’re encrypted (client-side scanning / “Chat Control”).

The stated aim: detect child sexual abuse material. The reality: it pulls the encryption rug out from under everyone by requiring software on your phone or in your messenger to inspect content before it’s protected. That is not theory — regulators in Europe are pushing rules that do exactly this, and security experts, VPN groups and cryptographers are sounding alarms.

Why that is technically catastrophic (short list)

It introduces a universal backdoor point. Anything that inspects plaintext on a device expands the attack surface malware, state actors, criminal groups all get new opportunities to exploit the scanner or its keys. Client-side scanning is fragile and error-prone: false positives, over-broad heuristics and mission-creep make benign speech flagged, censored or handed to authorities.

Once normalised, the tech can be repurposed. A tool built for one objective becomes a useful tool for other surveillance political policing, mass monitoring, corporate data grabs. Industry bodies and cryptographers warn this is the trajectory. Legal backdoors and mass access are already routine via data requests, mutual legal assistance, and telecom lawful-intercept mechanisms so added device access layers simply marry technical weakness to legal power.

How fucked it is, in plain terms This drags end-to-end encryption into the mud. Security guarantees collapse if every device runs mandatory scanners. People who rely on private channels journalists, activists, dissidents, survivors lose safe spaces. Attackers get a bigger buffet of vulnerabilities. Societies get normalised surveillance and political chilling. That’s not hyperbole experts say the architecture itself becomes hostile to security once scanning is systematised.

The “everyone must delete every app” reality check (what deletion actually buys and what it doesn’t), deleting tracker-heavy social apps cuts one big attack surface: app telemetry, persistent background access, and third-party SDKs vanish from that device. That lowers exposure. Device privacy dashboards and permission audits make this visible.

Full protection requires more than deleting a few apps: account data stored in cloud backups, contacts, linked services, device OS telemetry, carrier logs, and centralised cloud providers remain sources of leakage. Lawful access chains still let governments or adversaries extract data unless those services and backups are also removed or encrypted under keys you control. Practical reality: mass deletion is messy and unsustainable for most people. The only foolproof move is to cut the whole digital tether air-gapped devices, no cloud accounts, no consumer app ecosystem. That’s realistic for tiny groups, impossible at scale for societies that rely on online banking, comms, commerce.

Short of full isolation, the action set narrows to: delete invasive apps, revoke permissions, stop cloud backups, use open, audited E2EE apps and minimal-service devices, and avoid platforms that implement client-side scanning. That reduces risk but does not eliminate it.

Why this spills into America and everywhere else Global tech is global policy. If Europe forces client-side scanning into common practice, vendors like Apple, Google, Meta, Messaging providers face huge compliance pressure and engineering precedent. Governments copy laws and use international legal cooperation to push data access across borders. Law enforcement agencies already share methods and requests; a normalized EU approach becomes a blueprint for other regimes. The VPN and security industry explicitly warns that normalising this surveillance tech invites wider adoption, not containment.

Bottom line, bluntly This is a structural dismantling of real privacy. The only absolute defence is severing the digital chains that make modern life convenient. For everyone else: expect a permanent trade-off convenience and participation in normal online life in exchange for systemic vulnerability and surveillance. That trade is now being pushed into law, and once baked in, it spreads fast. This is not small. This is a systemic collapse of device-side privacy.

If parents have to care about their children’s safety online, they shouldn’t have children? Why are you allowing your child to roam the internet freely? Is the iPad their parents now? If the eu governments pass this law it’s not just your child being monitored now, it’s you, your friends, your coworkers, your family, your community, towns and cities, businesses everywhere will pull out of your countries just to avoid being monitored, businesses are leeches anyways for not self auditing where their money goes in the first place, with this new law EVERYONE mostly innocent people, will be treated like potential criminals and the profiling will become systemic, look up and left or right.

To stop it you have until October 14th before EVERYTHING on your devices getting searched, your shepherds don’t want to keep you safe, they want to create the illusion that you were never safe to begin with. (i can’t directly link anything but if you search the best possible method to stop this from happening (contacting your eu representative of countries that haven’t voted yet, you can protect yourself personal privacy without having your governments assume you’re doing anything bad because after it will be “guilty regardless of innocence”)).

Sources:

https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/eu-chat-control-proposal/

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/report/chat-control-eu-privacy/

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/13/europe-chat-control-law-privacy-security/

https://www.privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/5321/client-side-scanning-dangerous-precedent

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/chat-control-law-would-undermine-encryption-and-privacy/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/client-side-scanning-is-dangerous-and-unworkable.html