Screenshots, or just adding a journalist to the group chat.

There's an explicit clause that exempts politicians from the ban. They get privacy because they need it, but nobody else does.

politicians are very stupid when it comes to tech it seems.

They are so so so stupid, about this.

There will be so much blackmail and ruined political careers if these backdoors get installed.

A backdoor is never solely used by the folks one might hope would use it.

It's understandable from law enforcement perspective that it's important to snoop on actual criminal communications. The EU has pretty reasonable measures and good at cracking down on continental-wide criminal activities. However, can we trust authorities that they won't over reach with the chat control and violate privacy and freedom of speech? Like, come on, nothing good ever came from spying on communications. Catching criminals and/or terrorists is a convenient excuse to spy on dissidents.

We've seen it happen in America with the PATRIOT Act. People dismissed the opposition to it with "nothing to hide" thought terminating cliche, or accuse you of pedophile or terrorist for not wanting spying on communications. Then twenty years later, Americans have a fascist government who allowed a corporate asshole to steal information from the federal government. And those information will be used for surveillance capitalism. The same will happen to us in the EU if we don't push back hard on this Orwellian desires of politicians.

putting a bullet (double tap) in Chat Control,

Yes, please.

once and for all.

LOL, no. They'll come back again with some other bullshit to Save the Children!™, it's a never-ending whack-a-mole.

That means nothing when the servers stop taking EU traffic

I don’t use any of these apps, so I’m not quite sure how they work. But couldn’t you just make an app that keeps a local private and public key pair. Then when you send a message (say via regular sms) it includes under the hood your public key. Then the receiver when they reply uses your public key to encrypt the message before sending to you?

Unless the sms infrastructure is going to attempt to detect and reject encrypted content, this seems like it can be achieved without relying on a server backend.

Signal has never done that. Whilst the app might not be available in some regions they've been proud to talk about how people can use it to avoid government barriers.

You can run your own server for signal by the look of it

TBH I was confused when I came across the term "sideloading" for the first few times because I thought it was something new. Part of the plan I guess. Damn.

There are groups to support:

• https://www.eff.org/issues/eff-europe
• https://fsfe.org/
• https://edri.org/

And in the UK:

• https://www.openrightsgroup.org/

Some political groups are better than others, but most politicians are clueless.

The key is to get muggles to understand we are living in Technofeudalism and why being digital serfs is bad. The problem is ineffective competition law and that monopolies are bad. That monopolies and standards are not the same thing. I have no idea how. Most people are just naturally compliant and unquestioning of something seemingly so abstract.

In the 80's (I'm that old), many home computers came with the programming manual, and the impetus was to learn to code and run your programs on your own device. Even with Android it's not especially hard (with LLM's even less so than it used to be) to download Android Studio, throw some shit onto the screen, hit build, and run your own helper app or whatever sideloaded installed via usb cable (or wirelessly) on your own device.

In certain cases (cars, health related hw etc.) I get why it's probably for the best if the user is not supposed to mod their device outside preinstalled sw's preferences/settings. But when it comes to computers (i.e. smartphones, laptops, tablets, tv boxes etc.) I fully agree with Cory here. Such a shame everything must go to shit.

Most of the general public buries their head in the sand. They are convinced being politically involved is either a waste of time or makes you crazy.

Are they?

Even the OPLus phones are planning to softlock their phones in newer models

Nah i don't. I can hope though and the backdoor is a threat not just for consumers but also companies.

I looked into signal servers some years ago and found nothing, are you meaning like tunnel things to another country?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

You kid but this has been thought of / done; pirates or other boats will board them and shoot them down/sink them/loot them.

Just like old times