june 30, 2026

On Chat Control and Privacy

The EU is trying to monitor our chats, but what does this say about the human nature?

[essay] [privacy] [theology]

We all need to protect the kids, right? After all, the growth of the internet has also increased the prevalence of child exploitation. It is a terrible reality that alongside the comfort anonymity brings, filthy people are bound to abuse that comfort. The existence of this problem is also a perfect excuse for governments to spy on citizens.

The EU has been trying to implement a legislation called the "Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR)" that targets private messages before they are sent, scanning them to ensure they do not contain exploitative material. Politicians are excluded from this scan, by the way^[1], in case you were wondering whose privacy actually matters. After all, the government should keep kids safe, and a regular citizen has nothing to hide, so it's fine. You are not a criminal, right? So the clear expectation is that you remain complacent with any implementation of message scanning or ID checks while you browse the "free" internet.

This is arguably the worst mindset one can have. The West has framed this surveillance-protection game as a zero-sum choice: either give up your privacy, or kids get exploited left and right. Is it really that black and white, or is the government lying to you? (Surely they want what is best for you.) They are lying. And they don't care whether your information remains safe — because they know full well that what they're proposing is infeasible.

Why is this infeasible?

The essential mechanism of Chat Control is "upload moderation", which is a non-invasive sounding AI filter on your phone that scans your every message, every note, every image, and every link before they are encrypted and sent to the recipient. Your phone policing your every move, before you make it.

The issue here is that implementing a device that looks at your content before it is encrypted doesn't mean it is only restricted for the "good guys". The fact remains that if such a mechanism exists, it can be exploited. Matter of fact, over 500 scientists and cryptographers wrote an open letter, concluding that "safe on-device scanning" is simply a fairy tale — it is impossible^[2]. There is simply no design space for a solution that provides law enforcement meaningful capability without placing every citizen's private communications at serious risk^[3]. Even the EU Council’s own Legal Service agrees on this^[4].

Thus, when these filters inevitably classify an innocent photograph, your data no longer belongs to you and the recipient, but it is instead fed to a large government database, made available to law enforcement, and suddenly you are a suspect. You are no longer innocent. But, we need to keep kids safe right? So allow a random government worker to look at photos of your kids before sending them to your parents.

The Destruction of Democracy

If the previous points were not sufficient to make you skeptical of mass surveillance, let me show how this legislation exposed the rotting democracy we are holding onto.

The government is not acting in good faith to have a working solution to the Chat Control issue. The timeline is as follows:

In 2021, the ePrivacy Directive introduced Chat Control 1.0, permitting voluntary scanning by providers. Later in May 2022, Ylva Johansson proposed a permanent mandatory version of this 1.0, scanning E2E encrypted services and allowing AI to detect previously undetected abuse and behaviour^[5].

This proposal was rejected, the LIBE committee of the EU demanded targeted warrants, not indiscriminate scanning. Germany blocked it in 2025. Even the Parliament let it expire in March 2026^[6]. As you can see, elected representatives said NO at every chance they got. However, the EU Commission had a new presidency, a rebranding, and tried again at every turn. It was rejected 6 distinct times since 2022.

The worst part is in June 2026, the Parliament President Roberta Metsola chose to go behind her own institution's decision and told the Council to bring back the already expired Chat Control proposal^[7]. Diplomats were not happy.

Investigations even showed that the EU Commission ran targeted ads in countries where Chat Control was not popular, excluding digital rights activists from seeing said ads, violating EU's own laws^[8].

Nothing to hide

We need this mindset to disappear. The whole idea that "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear." is beyond flawed. Sure it sounds reasonable at first, but have you really thought about it?

Research shows that this phrase depends on a definition of privacy so specific that it's essentially useless: privacy exists solely to conceal wrongdoing^[9]. Except privacy is not about hiding crimes. You close your door when you shower, are you a criminal? Privacy is a necessary right for everyone outlined in Article 12 of the UDHR^[10]. Perhaps it is not a dictator watching your every move, but there is an abstracted algorithm that feeds your data into itself and makes critical decisions about your life and freedom while you are left in the dark about anything that is happening. Quite Kafkaesque... No need to be nervous about first appearances, because they already have a profile of who you are independent of how you want to be perceived.

The whole mass surveillance brings a chilling effect. Look at the Snowden leaks, Wikipedia searches for DHS related articles fell by 30%, because people were censoring themselves, in case someone was watching^[11]. Research also shows that 1 in 3 writers in otherwise free countries avoid writing certain topics out of similar fears^[12]. Mass surveillance doesn't need to catch criminals to affect the population, knowing that you are being watched is enough.

Passivity

If we concluded that "nothing to hide" is used to justify surveillance, what determines actually accepting it? The answer is most likely passive resignation. Or "privacy cynicism" as defined by literature. People feel powerless in the face of such infrastructure because of its complexity and integration into systems to oppose clearly.

From my research there are three stages of said passivity. Firstly, genuine ignorance, which is engineered deliberately by using terms like "upload moderation" and jargon. Second, moral cowardice, since people essentially affirm that institutions can claim to protect you and undermine your legal rights. Lastly, and most importantly, learned helplessness, where we're exposed to circumstances beyond our control so frequently that we give up any hope of change^[13]. Once we're all forced to accept surveillance, when our legally elected officials have no say in legislation, when opposition breaks laws to run psyops on the people, we learn one thing — our consent and desires do not matter.

The Theology behind it all

I believe that the secular case I presented is sufficient, but it is not complete to the extent of my view on the matter. Underneath all the politics, we are discussing what a human being is, and how is one's soul represented.

In the Gospel of Matthew, God tells us "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (Matthew 6:6)". In the original greek, the work used for room is tameion, which is an inner chamber where people keep their valuables out of sight. From a theological standpoint, the tameion is a reference to the human heart: the space that holds the identity of a person and it belongs only to the person and God. The heart of a person is where we encounter truth, struggle with emotions, and seek repentance. This cannot be performed with an audience without destroying the meaning of the struggle.

Eastern Orthodox Christianity uses this through Hesychasm, the pursuit of hesychia. The fathers taught nepsis, which is guarding your mind: locking down one's cognitive faculties inside the soul to have genuine connection with God's energies. Mass surveillance is anti-hesychastic by nature. The anxiety caused by relentless and constant monitoring destroys the integrity of any definition of an inner chamber. Practising nepsis becomes impossible.

Funnily enough, the oldest legal precent for private communication is also non-secular. The seal of confession is private communication after all. Canon 983.1 of the Code of Canon Law declares this secrament "inviolable." The Orthodox Nomocanon Canon 120 even prescribes a three year suspension for any priests who exposes a believer's sins. The reason behind this is clear, if there is no absolute knowledge that privacy exists, people cannot confess their sins without holding back. No repentance of sins, then no moral transformation. The EU's attempt to break E2E encryption is essentially the state breaking the seal of confession.

Continuing to look through the Orthodox lens of anthropology, we should look at the Imago Dei, which states a definition: autexousion. Which is essentially free will, the power someome has to achieve self-determination. Methodius of Olympus argued that God gifted humanity with free will, so that they can choose virtue consciously, rather than it being forced upon them. Acting good because you're forced to is not good, it turns you into a machine that is afraid of consequences. A person being good, for the sake of goodness and no external pressure, is truly good. If you're behaving online because an AI filter is watching your messages doesn't make you virtuous, people who are truly evil will find other ways after all. You are just being stripped of your agency.

My claim in this chapter is that when a state indiscriminately spies on its citizens, it usurps a portion of divine omniscience. Being all seeing in a sense with no love to give, all knowing without mercy, judging without a trial. From a theological standpoint, we can see this as extrapolitical, as spiritual violence. A gift from God, free will, is being taken away. The institutional replacement of a God, which is without love and only exists to accuse.

Closing

Accepting the excuses of the EU reduces the sanctity of human life. Succumbing to learned helplessness is to abandom autexousion. This passivity is called acedia by the Desert Fathers.

You can always fight this, if you believe democracy is dead, take matters into your own hands.

I will leave this writing with this:

References

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