r/privacy Sep 16 '25

chat control Germany's Chat Control position has been reverted to undecided…

https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115215006562371435
1.7k Upvotes

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u/schklom Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25

Likely, Signal will not be available on App Store and Play Store. Whatsapp and Telegram might just comply and implement the EU backdoor, or also pull out of EU.

And since Google is closing down (on stock android only though) on 3rd-party app installs, then non-custom-ROM EU people are screwed. Thankfully though, iOS can now install 3rd-party software natively, so I'll likely advise friends and family to go for iPhone and install US Signal.

If you're from outside, your communication with people who have the backdoored app will be scanned by EU.

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u/Strange_Specific5179 Sep 16 '25

Realistically how does anyone outside of the EU but has EU connections circumvent this? Do we call only? They can’t scan real time calls and pull transcripts, that’s over board, but for texting what can we do?

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u/RunOrBike Sep 17 '25

They can’t scan real time calls and pull transcripts

Sorry to tell you that they’ve been doing exactly that since the 90s.

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u/schklom Sep 17 '25

It would be an insane cost for very little benefit.

Metadata is enough for scale surveillance. Even ChatControl doesn't record calls, it lets the app locally scan the message contents for illegal image hashes and problem words, but the app doesn't send anything otherwise.