While client side scanning is a very big problem yes it wouldn’t have a very effective time depending on the measures taken here.
Cause as I mentioned before it would be hard to affect non stock Operating Systems with this. GrapheneOS in particular has strongly opposed any kind of implementation of anything that is even remotely backdoorish and would rather shut down than include anything of the sort.
And while I don’t know the views of other Operating Systems I imagine CalyxOS’s views are also likely the same and any that even somewhat value privacy.
Also as mentioned this app utilizes E2EE which it has enabled by default. As far as I know the encryption in question is more dependent on the app than it is the service as in the server does not have the means to decrypt your content. This is further proven by the fact if you switch devices without a proper recovery method or uninstall the app your previous messages and trust boundaries are lost in the process cause new keys have to be made.
So with all of this in mind for it to be effective in this circumstance on said app it would have to be implemented inside the app which the only way I could see the dev doing that is if they are forced to. And even then the app is FOSS so that wouldn’t really work cause someone could just fork it and take the offending code out.
Of course that doesn’t mean it isn’t problematic. Especially if not implementing it becomes a illegal offense but…
Well… It may just have to become one of those it has to be done things. Of course noteworthy disclaimer I am absolutely NOT trying to encourage illegal activity
I am just saying if it comes to that a choice has to be made. This is one of the big reasons why privacy is crucial and important. Something you love one day may become illegal the very next day.
Can’t list any examples cause a lot of them are VERY political but iykyk.
But again ideally it doesn’t come to that and governments go for a much more reasonable compromise after pressure. That would be the best case scenario.
Governments want control, they ignored petitions that tried to stop Age Verification. The United States Supreme Court even supported Age Verification, which is a huge problem. Essentially, the governments are making the rules that essentially prevent Privacy-centered applications from doing what they’re supposed to do, and that angers me to no tomorrow!
Well, I just got wind that DeviantArt has implemented a Messages system, and the users there are in full on riot mode! Not to mention that could end up being spied on by DeviantArt’s staff and the EU. So it’s becoming clear that conversations will inevitably be impossible to do privately, only direct In-Person conversations will be possible in about a decade at this rate.
The future is unwritten - you are an actor, your decisions matter. If you tell yourself nothing can be done, of course nothing will be done (by you, at least).
You can, instead, choose radical optimism, as an intellectual and moral necessity. As Samuel Beckett said:
Actually, E2E encryption has a deliberate design flaw that corporations don’t want to fix because governments are blackmailing those corporations (In a sense) to keep them unpatched. Not very good isn’t it?