The gvmt in my country (UK) have stoked fears about security to pass, and begin the process of passing, various bits of legislation to curtail both activity and privacy - laws to make strike action nearly impossible, laws to class any demonstration or protest as contravening public order, the online safety bill to break encryption, laws to criminalise dissent and perceived ‘anti britishness’ and are introducing plans to roll out more and more facial recognition systems everywhere.

Of course there is online crime, including CSAM and terrorists organising shit, but the legislation they’ve both passed and are planning to pass does nothing to stop these things e.g. making Signal break users encrypted messages won’t prevent CSAM as the abuse has already happened to the victim, it’s also trivial for anyone with a basic knowledge to set up their own encrypted service so that’s where they’ll go. Lastly the people it will affect is the faith of those using Signal et al quite legitimately.

What the gvmt are doing is assuming we’re all criminals and that it’s therefore totally legitimate to pry into every corner of our lives. What they should be doing is enacting legislation that will work to prevent things like CSAM from happening in the first place.