Germany must stand firmly against client-side scanning in Chat Control [pdf]

German politics, parties, and historical analogies

• Commenters are pessimistic about the current German government, citing a long pro‑surveillance history (data retention, speech prosecutions).
• CDU and parts of SPD are portrayed as fundamentally supportive of maximum access to private communications; others push back that there is meaningful opposition within SPD.
• Several see current moves as laying legal groundwork for future authoritarian or far‑right governments, explicitly invoking Weimar, Gestapo, and Stasi precedents.
• A few call this framing conspiratorial or exaggerated, but most agree it’s dangerous to create powers that could be abused by successors.

Effectiveness and real motivations of Chat Control

• Multiple examples are raised where violent attackers were already known to authorities; commenters argue information is not the bottleneck, enforcement is.
• Many say the “protect the children / fight CSAM” justification is a pretext for power and mass control, not a proportionate or effective solution.
• Some describe the proposal as a form of psychological/intimidatory “violence” against the population; one thread even likens it, in substance, to state terrorism.
• There’s concern that private 1:1 or small-group chats will be treated as public “hate speech” spaces, eroding genuine private discourse.

Technical workarounds and their limits

• PGP, S/MIME, Autocrypt, air‑gapped machines, steganography, FTE, and chaffing & winnowing are all mentioned as potential evasion techniques.
• Many argue these will remain available to a small technical elite, but mass, effortless encrypted messaging will likely die if client‑side scanning is mandated.
• Some foresee scanning pushed down into OS and even firmware layers; encryption may then be detectable and flagged, or even blocked.
• Others stress the core issue is not “banning math” but banning general‑purpose computing that doesn’t “snitch” on plaintext.

Centralized vs decentralized messaging models

• One view: Chat Control mainly exploits the centralized, intermediary model (Signal, WhatsApp, etc.); true peer‑to‑peer or federated systems are harder to regulate.
• Counterpoints: states can criminalize use of non‑compliant networks or target developers and operators; only law‑abiding users get effectively surveilled.
• Matrix is suggested as an alternative but criticized over past cryptographic flaws.

Civil liberties, EU scope, and activism

• Commenters critique weaknesses of Germany’s constitutional protections (e.g., speech limits, lack of “fruit of the poisonous tree”), while others note that Germans often see both hate speech and surveillance as tools of dictators.
• It’s emphasized that this is driven by specific member states, not “Brussels” in the abstract, but that EU rules will impact anyone communicating with EU residents and may be exported via EU conditional funding.
• Several links to activist campaigns (e.g., fightchatcontrol.eu) and a German email template urge citizens to lobby ministries and MPs.
• Signal’s public stance is widely praised; some argue they have no viable “sell‑out” path without destroying their core promise.