ChatControl update: blocking minority held but Denmark is moving forward anyway

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Endgame Visions for the Internet

  • Many see ChatControl, porn/age-verification, and digital IDs as steps toward an identity‑bound “Web 3.0” where every packet is tied to a real person, speech is fully attributable, and online life is legally equivalent to speaking in public.
  • Fears: full government control of digital media, politically curated speech (“protect the children” → “protect from hate” → “protect from dissent”), Stasi‑style surveillance, and the effective end of democracy once opposition cannot organize privately.
  • Minority view: there is no coherent master plan—just a “headless blunder” of states, agencies, and lobbyists pushing in the same direction.

Technical Mechanisms and Lock‑In

  • Digital identity: mDLs and W3C Digital Credentials API flowing OS → browser → site, enabling frictionless age checks, bans, and bot filtering, at the cost of anonymity.
  • Client‑side scanning: messages scanned on-device before E2EE, or encrypted to both recipient and state keys; “encryption” remains, but privacy doesn’t.
  • Device attestation: scenarios where ISPs only pass packets signed by “approved” hardware/software, effectively outlawing unapproved OSes and decentralized tools.
  • Platform lock‑down: Apple’s app-store control, Android’s upcoming “verified developer” requirement, OS‑level age checks (e.g. Brazil), all seen as enabling compliance and killing sideloaded “clean” apps.

Motivations and Political Context

  • Named drivers: law‑enforcement and EU security bodies frustrated by gangs, youth violence, and CSAM; Scandinavian states portrayed as especially control‑oriented.
  • Others point to surveillance‑tech vendors (e.g. AI CSAM scanners), Palantir‑type systems, and opaque lobbying (redacted attendee lists) as core beneficiaries.
  • Some argue Danish politics and specific CSAM scandals created strong domestic pressure to “do something”, even with crude tools.

Public Safety vs Privacy

  • Pro‑control arguments: encrypted messengers make sophisticated crime (car theft rings, gangs, CSAM networks) harder to investigate; wiretap‑style access is framed as restoring the old investigative balance.
  • Counterpoints:
    • Serious criminals can and will use custom apps, PGP, steganography, or self‑hosted servers; making encryption illegal only criminalizes its users, not its existence.
    • There are narrower, less intrusive levers: stronger car security, container and export controls, traditional surveillance with warrants.
    • Mass scanning mainly harms ordinary users, journalists, dissidents, and minorities; false positives, abuse, and eventual mission‑creep are seen as inevitable.

Civil Liberties, Democracy, and Resistance

  • Many argue private communication is a precondition for democracy and for the possibility of future resistance; sacrificing it to marginal crime reduction is unacceptable.
  • Process complaints: EU opacity, ignored blocking minorities, weak media scrutiny; sense that citizens often don’t even know proposals exist.
  • Strategies discussed: protest, contacting officials, boycotting jurisdictions or platforms, moving to hardened OSes and decentralized networks—tempered by realism about ecosystem lock‑in and state power.