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Rather, it's an argument that law enforcement should start engaging with those groups on telegram directly, i.e. setting up stings etc and just actually go and catch them. Do some good old police work.
If you're able to find them on telegram, clearly law enforcement are capable too, if they're resourced and willing. Encryption isn't the problem here.
Now tell me, if law enforcement can just get into those group since they're not encrypted, why are not they doing that? What do they need to break encryption for?
Drug cartels will continue to have easy access to such platforms, as will anyone willing to do business with them, since such cartels and their business partners do not care about following the law. The same is true for child pornographers, hitmen, and so on. The technology exists and does not inherently depend on any middleman amenable to EU authority. No EU legislation can reverse that. All this might do is force them to switch to a different chat provider that will ignore EU law, or to run one themselves.
The true effect of any legislation that purports to circumvent end-to-end encryption to address the concerns you list will primarily be reducing the privacy of law-abiding people, including those who really need it: a French journalist reporting on corruption in a public contract bidding process, a Hungarian dissident organizing opposition to Fidesz's authoritarianism, or even someone seeking help to flee from the oversight of an abusive spouse with personal connections to EU member state surveillance institutions.
Not a useful way to catch up with tech - whether or not a better way exists, this law is literally worse than doing nothing.
Funny that they can pinpoint and read the messages of those groups already without ChatControl.
Also, perhaps issues around the demographic in question should perhaps be addressed with other measures. I think they would continue if the entire Internet were shut down.
My point it: if shouting "I am doing something illegal" in public isn't enough to get law enforcement's attention, how would access to private messages change this?
In case of Telegram groups you mention, local authorities can use existing laws regulating public social networks (Telegram really works similar to Facebook in these use cases, these telegram groups are neither private nor end to end encrypted). The fact that Telegram doesn't cooperate is not because of lack of regulation, but lack of leverage against it (which seems to be one of the reasons why authorities in France detained Telegram CEO recently).
Why shouldn't they? When i buy drugs it's a whole load of fucking about because they're illegal where I am, but not illegal just 40km away. Free and EASY apps reduce the friction. Win.
So we have extortion, illegal drug dealing and illegal guns in one fine evening.
ChatControl is not the solution however. Reporting it to the police didn't do a damn thing either though so I don't know!
I'll add that my cousin was stabbed 6 times by a coke head flat mate who had a psychotic episode.
And I haven't started on the slavery side of the production side of the supply chain.
That exists primarily because of the legal status. If cocaine were legal, for example, the production wouldn't be much worse than say coffee cultivation.
And that's terrible what happened to your cousin, but I don't see how those relatively limited cases, as bad as they are, compare to the millions of lives that have been destroyed globally by the war on drugs.
Driving under the influence is already illegal and would obviously remain so in a society where more drugs were legal. I think we mostly all accept that needing to pass a breathalyser test to start your car would be absurd, so why are currently illegal drugs any different?
> a system that disqualifies them from public healthcare
Why? We don’t exclude obese people, those who do no exercise, smokers, alcoholics from public healthcare. In my eyes that is the bedrock of a public service, you get it whether you “deserve” it or not. To say otherwise opens the door to far too many situations where people cannot get the help they need.
Did they at least leave the coke?
Not sure if you can win this whack a mole.
To me, this as ridiculous as saying "Why should drug cartels have free and EASY access to the internet?". The genie is out of the bottle, and there is no substitute for good old fashioned (hard) police work.