Imagine writing a message to your partner and, between your thumbs and the send button, an unseen inspector quietly reads it first. That is the practical meaning of proposals to weaken end to end encryption. This is not a debate about abstract mathematics. It is about the device in your hand, the conversations in your living room, the photos of your children, the confidential work files on your laptop, and the questions you ask your doctor. The choice is simple. Either your private life is protected from the moment you press send or a scanner is installed on your device that inspects everything before protection can begin.
End to end encryption means only the sender and the intended recipient can read a message. No one in the middle can see it. Not your network provider. Not the app company. Not a criminal watching the traffic. The new idea sounds modest. Scan content on the device before it is encrypted and only raise an alert when something matches a database. In reality that requires your phone to copy and examine every message, photo, voice note, and file. A checkpoint would be created inside your device. It would run all the time for every person. It would look at everything in order to decide what counts as something.
Once a device can read content before encryption, others can read it as well. Vendors could be compelled to adjust what the scanner looks for and how it reports. Governments could change the scope by quiet policy updates. What begins with a narrow list for child protection can expand to extremism, public order, or copyright. Attackers would not bother breaking strong encryption. They would go after the scanner, its databases, and the reporting pathway, because those pieces have privileged access and are cheaper to compromise. Every powerful system also creates insiders with special permissions and logs. History is clear that privileged access invites bribery, coercion, and abuse.
The harm would not be theoretical. It would land on ordinary people. Pattern matching is probabilistic. Family photos, medical images, and art can resemble prohibited material to a model. A mistaken flag can lock your account, trigger an automated report, or place you on an internal list you cannot see or challenge. Scanners struggle with context. A journalist reviewing evidence, a researcher handling datasets, or a parent talking to a paediatrician may all be misread by an algorithm that only sees pixels and tokens. Most people also change behaviour when they know they are being watched. They share less, ask fewer questions, and avoid sensitive topics. That is a chilling effect and it is real.
There is a darker route that does not require complex fiction. In countries that drift toward authoritarian control, on device scanning becomes a tool to police dissent. Imagine reposting a call for a peaceful protest that the ruling party now categorises as extremist. Overnight the indicator list is updated. Your private group chat is flagged. The platform suspends you. The report goes to a national centre. You are detained and your devices are seized. The immediate charge is not the post. It is possession of prohibited material found by the scanner. The process becomes the punishment and the public lesson is simple. Speak less.
Criminals will also learn to weaponise the rules that force devices to scan for child abuse material. A harasser or a corrupt official can push prohibited images to a target through file drops, proximity shares, compromised accounts, or poisoned links. The scanner recognises the content and silently reports. The victim has now seemingly possessed the worst material imaginable. This tactic already exists in other forms. Mandated scanning lowers the cost and raises the reliability for the attacker. It also muddies legal defence, because your own device is now the witness against you and the chain of custody is harder to prove.
From there the path to cybercrime becomes predictable. A scanner installed before encryption needs broad access to your files, messages, and photos. Criminals will reverse engineer or imitate that access and wrap it into malware. First they copy your data in the background. Then they encrypt the originals and demand payment. This time the extortion is stronger because the stolen content is intimate and searchable. Finally they scale the attack through botnets that hit schools, charities, small businesses, and homes. Security professionals call this attack economics. Offenders choose reliable pathways that exist everywhere. A mandated scanner creates exactly that.
The policy also risks overwhelming the very services it claims to help. Mass scanning produces mass alerts. Most will be noise. A small percentage will be serious and must be acted on quickly. The torrent of low quality signals will swamp investigators, forensic laboratories, and courts. Each mistaken alert consumes time that should have gone to targeted work that actually rescues victims and disrupts offenders. Leaders should focus on outcomes rather than the volume of inputs. Numbers on a dashboard do not equal justice in the real world.
Jurisdiction remains a hard limit. Many networks that trade in the worst content operate from places with no meaningful cooperation or with openly hostile intent. Think of operators in Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other jurisdictions beyond reach. Scanning the devices of law abiding people in Europe or the United Kingdom does not create legal reach into those networks. It only creates more alerts at home while the most dangerous actors continue largely untouched. The mismatch is painful. The people most affected become ordinary citizens whose devices are easier to exploit.
There are other traps that are easy to miss. Domestic abusers already install stalkerware. A mandated scanner normalises surveillance and gives abusers cover. They can claim it is just the system. Any central body that distributes indicators or receives reports becomes a prime target for data theft. A breach would expose who was flagged, for what reason, and when. Mission creep is a certainty once the plumbing exists. Today the list is child protection. Tomorrow political extremism. Next season misinformation or blasphemy. Border checks become more intrusive because travellers can be compelled to unlock devices. On device scanning would produce a rich audit trail for inspection which places journalists, lawyers, and dissidents at greater risk. Finally, models often perform unevenly across languages and communities, which pulls unequal law enforcement attention onto minorities.
Common questions arise. Some people say they have nothing to hide and ask why they should care. The answer is that they have everything to protect. The same mathematical properties that shield personal messages also protect bank transfers, hospital records, and company secrets. Break the guarantee for one purpose and it weakens for all. Others wonder whether strict limits could make a scanner safe. Laws can set limits on paper, but code is what runs on your device. If the code can scan one class of content it can be instructed to scan another. Attackers and future governments will both try. Another claim is that this is the only way to protect children. That is not correct. The most effective work uses targeted warrants, undercover operations, specialist forensics on seized devices, swift removal of hosting, survivor services, and international policing partnerships. These methods focus on offenders rather than turning every citizen into a suspect.
A sensible approach is clear. Keep end to end encryption intact. Treat it as critical infrastructure that protects citizens, health systems, and the economy. Use targeted warrants that are signed by a judge. Pursue suspects with precision and collect evidence from end points under due process. Invest in digital forensics so that lawful access to seized devices is more capable without weakening security for everyone. Resource the human work. Place more trained investigators inside offender communities online. Expand cross border cooperation where it is effective. Fund victim identification and survivor support. If any scanning is attempted, demand transparency. Publish technical specifications, false positive rates, and independent audits, and create real routes for appeal. Sunshine is not a luxury when fundamental rights are at stake.
There are practical steps for individuals and organisations today. Use reputable messaging apps that provide end to end encryption and keep them updated. Enable strong device unlock methods and two factor authentication. Back up important data offline so that ransomware has less leverage. Treat unsolicited files and links with caution, even if they appear to come from people you know. Learn how to export and delete platform data so that you can respond quickly if an account is compromised. If you travel with sensitive material, consider a clean device and minimise what crosses borders. Know your rights regarding device searches where you live. Support survivor services and credible child protection work, because real safety depends on people and process, not only on tools.
At bottom this is a question about the kind of society we wish to build. A backdoor on your device will not stay in the right hands. It will be copied, coerced, or corrupted. It will create new ways for others to plant evidence against you, to steal your data, and to extort you with your private life. It will flood the police with noise while serious offenders operate from safe jurisdictions. Security is not the opposite of privacy. Privacy is a security control. Keep it strong and keep it targeted at criminals. Demand policies that deliver real protection for children and the public without placing the entire population under pre emptive suspicion. The measure of a free society is not how many devices it can scan. It is how well it holds offenders to account while leaving the rest of us free to live, speak, and trust the tools we carry.