Europol chief says Big Tech has 'responsibility' to unlock encrypted messages

ft.com

18 points·alephnerd··5 comments

Why is an article from Jan 2025 being recirculated on HN now?

It's not Europol's role to push for this, and the European commission has suffered setbacks with ChatControl and other measures already since that time with excellent politicians such as Patrick Breyer doing an outstanding job of informing about and advocating for privacy.

- https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-c... [Feb 2025 criticism of the "revolving door" and more context about how this is received] - an excellent resource overall curated by Mr. Breyer about Chat Control, it's advocates, sponsors, the due-process, alternatives and more https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

Europe has serious issues with privacy. Very concerning.

Compared to whom exactly? Surely you don’t mean the country currently scanning the social media profiles of every foreigner in the country try looking for an excuse to kidnap them off the streets and throw them into a foreign torture chamber with no due process.

Surely you aren’t trying to compare the two?

>Compared to whom exactly?

I live in Japan, where there is a strong cultural emphasis in privacy, which is reflected in law.

>Surely you don’t mean...

Yeah, I do not.

Europe also does have that for what it’s worth. Don’t let a statement from the head of the police talking about how encryption makes his job hard convince you otherwise.

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