The discourse around “ChatControl” (and friends) is dominated by absolutes. Catastrophic scenarios of criminals “going dark” vs. the government’s all-seeing eye prying open your phones to fight through crimes.
While catastrophizing has some attractive characteristics, the position that privacy is absolutely sacrosanct and trumps everything is not realistic. It would imply that private companies (or NGOs) can simply declare (through technological means) some area as out of reach for law enforcement. This is not the contract citizens have with their government.
Realpolitik, however, makes it almost an imperative to support this radical position.
Regulation like “ChatControl” currently always follows capabilities (can we do it & can we afford it?) and does strictly ignore the tradeoff involved (what do we lose permanently when we do this). Crucially, they ignore less invasive preliminary steps such as enforcement of existing laws, appropriate tools, training and budgets for law enforcement.
In the same spirit, these regulations always start with terrorist or “the children” then escalate to a lot of different things. Since these discussions are capability (and not trade-off driven) this seems to be only natural. This seems especially reckless given the massive changes to the hard-right in many countries and power blocs.
As long as the powers that be do not make concerted efforts to address these issues and build trust, not do just start extreme surveillance with really heinous crimes, it’s essentially impossible to not fundamentally oppose such initiatives.