It turns out, that the EU's push to completely abolish digital privacy might not actually be an altruistic move to save children from abuse. Several tech companies, including one headed by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, stand to profit substantially from the decision. Which is why they massively influenced it.
The EU wants to establish universal client-side scanning for text messages and photos on citizen's phones. With other words: All cryptography would be useless and hence, nobody would have any privacy in the digital realm anymore.
When Whitfield Diffie, Ronald Rivest, Steven M. Bellovin, Peter Neumann, Matt Blaze and Bruce Schneier come together to publish a paper on the security and privacy implications of client-side scanning, we should listen up.
Pegasus isn't new. Anyone in the field has known about NSO Group's spyware and its use against politicians, activists and journalists for half a decade. What's worth discussing, though, is how the topic has been ignored for so long. Both by the press and by iPhone maker Apple.
The fourth biggest smartphone maker in the world, Xiaomi from China, makes very cheap phones with decent features. But it looks like they are selling out your privacy to recoup some of the money you're saving when you buy their phones.
