> Total surveillance is not what the Danish minister is arguing for

If you backdoor E2EE crypto for one user, you've got to weaken it for everyone. There's no way around that.

What he's arguing for would require wiretapping every citizen, just in case you need to listen to the logs from any one citizen.

Even worse, the criminals will just compile the open source E2EE apps themselves without the backdoor, so the only people you'll be able to wiretap will be law-abiding citizens.

The "best" option (if there even is such a thing) would be to surveil endpoint devices, but the governments have failed to strongarm Apple into complying, so now they're going after the service providers.

Additionally, even with E2EE protocols, you can already tell from the metadata who is talking to whom, which is everything a government needs to get warrants, seize devices, and install surveillance devices.

So in the end, this proposal won't affect criminals, will reduce the security for every law-abiding citizen, and isn't even going to do anything useful against crime.

> you can already tell from the metadata who is talking to whom, which is everything a government needs to get warrants, seize devices, and install surveillance devices.

The standard for probable cause has sharply declined in this scenario you’ve constructed.

And you’re assuming that the government will seize the device, install surveillance software and the criminals will continue to use those devices? I don’t see how.

Even if the government has access to remote takeovers using unpatched zero days, those are not used on local investigations.