This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Karel Křemel
Nobody believes that this universal key won’t be used against them, that it won’t be misused, or that they can keep it safe from any bad actor making a copy.
But why am I telling you this? At this very moment, the European Union (of which I am generally fond) is currently proposing a universal key/backdoor/surveillance for everything we will ever send through our digital channels. Every message, every image, every file should be scanned – without our consent.
Let me reiterate on my example with a universal key. Imagine a government official/politician pushing for a new problematic keyword to be added to their local language pack or something. But he might have an agenda other than child protection (which is the official argument for all of this); it might be to track people with different political/ideological ideas than he prefers. People speaking about abortion, LGBTwhatever, God, dissidents, you name it.
I don’t trust anybody to have access to any such ultimate surveillance tool. Sure, it’s not full 1984, but it’s undoubtedly a significant step in that direction.
Fifteen member states already support it, three are opposing, and nine are undecided. As a member of one of those undecided countries, I’m currently reaching out to my representatives, trying to explain why this would be bad for all of us, and I believe you should do the same.
There is a website fightchatcontrol.eu that can provide you with all the necessary contact information for your representatives. Currently undecided countries are: Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Romania and Slovenia.
So please, if you’re from one of these countries, think about it and get in touch with your representatives and stop this before we lose the rest of our privacy. Right now, you can go to the fightchatcontrol.eu pick your country and get phone number, social media contacts, email addresses, office addresses to your representatives and tell/write them that your privacy matters!
And yes, children’s safety is essential – I can see that more and more as I’m becoming a father at any moment now. But this approach will ultimately make children less safe, not more. Criminals and predators will simply move to more obscure and unmonitored platforms or create their own encrypted tools (it happened in the past). At the same time, law-abiding families would lose their digital privacy and security. We’re essentially proposing to weaken everyone’s front door locks because some criminals might be hiding behind them. Still, the criminals will just find other hiding places while honest families become more vulnerable to break-ins.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Karel Křemel