Do shipping companies not have a responsibility to know their customer? Is there no required import/export paperwork for a container holding a 2-ton vehicle? Perhaps a title? Some proof of ownership?

I find it hard to believe that it's easier to force surveillance on all these innocent citizens than it is to fine a few shipping companies that haven't done their due diligence.

I think this is one of the key points. What crimes are they actually trying to disrupt? And surely there are less every-single-citizen-communication-dragnet ways to get that done.

If they're trying to save money on boots-on-the-ground I think they might be in for a surprise with how much manual effort it takes to find the needles in the massive haystack they want to build, and then to actually put all those needles together enough to build a case worthy of prosecution.

They think they understand step 1 and don't seem to be aware of the fact that there are quite a few more (expensive and complicated) steps that must follow to make this _actually_ useful.

I'm a little bit biased, however, as I've been on the wrong end of law enforcement's complete ineptitude as it relates to interpreting metadata into suspicion of crime. The size of the haystack they're trying to create is of such a size that the number of needles they find would become a haystack on its own.

In one way this would mean that Chat Control would be ineffective. But in the same way it would mean that a whole lot more innocent folks would have their lives turned upside down due to false positives. That is not a good solution.