The Surveillance Battle Never Really Ends: Reflections on Chat Control
There’s this phrase I keep seeing in discussions about digital privacy: “tactical redeployment.” Someone used it recently in a thread about Denmark’s decision to back away from the so-called “chat control” proposal, and honestly, it’s the perfect description of what’s been happening across Europe for the past few years.
The Danish Presidency has stepped back from pushing mandatory scanning of encrypted messages—at least for now. On the surface, that sounds like a win for privacy advocates. But here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: they didn’t let it go to a vote and fail. They just… backed away. Which means they can absolutely try again later when the public isn’t watching quite so closely.
This pattern is becoming depressingly familiar. Governments propose sweeping surveillance measures under the banner of “protecting children” or “fighting terrorism,” there’s public outcry, they retreat, everyone relaxes, and then six months later it’s back with a slightly different name and a fresh coat of paint. It’s exhausting, and it’s meant to be. They’re counting on us getting tired of fighting the same battle over and over again.
What really gets under my skin is the justification. Denmark’s Justice Minister apparently said that we need to “break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone’s civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services.” Let that sink in for a moment. The idea that private communication is somehow a privilege rather than a fundamental right is genuinely frightening. It’s the kind of doublespeak that would make Orwell’s head spin.
And it’s not just hypothetical scaremongering either. Denmark already has SMS scanning in place until 2026, with carriers “voluntarily” agreeing to scan every text message. The voluntary bit is doing some heavy lifting there—when every carrier agrees to the same privacy-invasive practice, it’s hard to call that voluntary in any meaningful sense. There’s even been a recent scandal where actual human beings were reading these messages, with carriers claiming they “accidentally” didn’t know the law. Right. Accidentally.
The whole situation reminds me of the slow erosion we’ve seen in Australia too. It starts with reasonable-sounding proposals—spam filters, protecting children, preventing terrorism—and before you know it, you’ve got metadata retention laws and backdoor requirements that fundamentally undermine encryption. The playbook is remarkably consistent across different countries.
What gives me some hope is seeing the pushback from people who actually understand the technology. Someone pointed out that SMS scanning is largely pointless anyway—who’s conducting serious criminal activity over unencrypted SMS in 2025? The people who need secure communication are already using encrypted messaging apps. The only people this kind of surveillance catches are ordinary citizens having perfectly legal conversations.
The broader issue here is about power and control, not safety. If these proposals were really about protecting children, there are far more effective ways to do it that don’t involve creating a surveillance infrastructure that can be abused by current or future governments. Fund social services. Support law enforcement with targeted warrants and proper oversight. But don’t build a system that scans every private message from every citizen on the off chance it might catch something illegal.
What frustrates me most is the asymmetry of it all. Privacy advocates have to win every single battle to maintain our rights. The surveillance crowd only needs to win once, and the infrastructure stays in place forever. It’s like playing a game where the other side gets unlimited respawns and we’re on our last life.
The solution isn’t to give up and retreat to dumb phones, as one person suggested in the discussion. That’s just accepting defeat. The solution is sustained attention and pressure on lawmakers. We need to make it politically costly for politicians to keep proposing these measures. Document their stances, remind people at every opportunity, make sure there are actual consequences for trying to erode our privacy rights.
One encouraging thing I noticed in the discussions was that this issue is bringing together people across the political spectrum. Both left and right can agree that government surveillance of private communications is bad news. That kind of consensus is rare these days, and it’s powerful. When you can’t easily dismiss opposition as partisan bickering, it makes it harder to push these proposals through.
The fight isn’t over. It never really is. There’s already something called “ProtectEU” waiting in the wings, ready to be the next battleground. They’ll keep trying with new names, new justifications, new packaging. The playbook is well-established: appeal to emotion, invoke the “Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse” (terrorists, drug dealers, child abusers, and organized crime), minimize the privacy concerns, and try to push it through before people realize what’s happening.
But here’s the thing—they keep backing down because the opposition works. Public pressure, technical experts explaining why these proposals are both dangerous and ineffective, cross-border coordination between privacy advocates—it all makes a difference. Every time they retreat, even if it’s just a tactical withdrawal, it’s proof that resistance isn’t futile.
So yeah, I’m frustrated. This battle is going to keep happening, probably for the rest of my life. But I’m not giving up, and neither should anyone else who values the right to private communication. Keep spreading the word, keep pressure on politicians, keep explaining to people why this matters. Because the moment we stop paying attention is the moment they’ll try to slip it through again.
The war continues, as someone aptly put it. But at least we’re still in the fight.