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Legislators, courts and bureaucrats (in this order) always fail to grasp such things. That's an idea erodes their jurisdiction and authority, and abhorrent to thee ethos.

No borders (from their POV), puts internet businesses above the law... which it sort of does. The global village happened, but global authority did not. There are no clean resolutions to some of these tensions.

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They might even understand that but if they think that they'll get more votes by banning e2e encryption, they'll ban it. If people will sideload WhatsApp, they might not go after them. They'll keep the extra votes coming from "we care about the children" and lose very little votes for the small inconvenience of sideloading once.

By the way, does a sideloaded WhatsApp on Android still update from the Play store? And what will iPhone owners do?

I don't think the thing driving this initiative is public sentiment. The public, obviously hates child abuse and that's a convincing argument. Child protection organisations might be vocal proponents... but law enforcement, mi5 and whatnot are also probably strong advocates and tend to have the ear of governments.

This is a security/law enforcement issue.

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