What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance?

It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing.

Why do people think this chat control thing will be effective?

I think most people, if pressed, would share your evaluation. However, even though surveillance is always marketed and sold as a tool for law enforcement, I think the people proposing such bills are aware that it's primary use is for political control, power, and espionage.

Safety is the bait in the bait and switch. So the measure is not whether or not surveillance actually works for making people safer. But whether or not it actually works as bait.

It's not about bad guys. It's about wrongthink. It's about surveilling the political opposition.

They could not care less about children. Kids are just a political weapon they use to create a pretext for global warrantless mass surveillance.

> What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance?

Not only the bad guys, I will jump into any software that allow me to bypass this crap.

Edward Snowden reported that some NSA officers were routinely watching and sharing people's private nudes.

It's more than just "snooping occationally". Government officials are at the end of the day strangers, and it's not their business spying on people's private lives. Not only do they intend to infringe upon our privacy in one of the most intrusive ways possible, but also at gunpoint. Think about that.

It is never about bad guys or protect the children. It is a political control.

Ask your local corporate IT guy how many people browse porn on work computers, even though they must know it's logged.

This is a very complex question.

Part of the answer is that they think the surveillance will be magically omniscient, because it's technology they don't understand.

Part of the answer is that they think that if there's a tool they could possibly have to give law enforcement more power, they must have it.

Part of it is that they don't care so much about actual bad guys, but about exercising absolute control over the general populace.

Part of it is that they don't believe that crime can actually be eliminated, but they do believe that they have to continue to take all possible measures against it.

And part of it is just that they don't think it's politically safe for them to oppose a measure like this (similar to, but not quite the same as, the second point above).

They don’t understand the technology and think it will magically apply everywhere.

Most politicians have no idea how anything works. Electric lights are simply magic, let alone the Internet. Obviously you can pass a law to make the wizards make the magic do whatever you want, right?

It is additional tool. More tools -> better chance at catching the criminals.

Downsides are purely theoretical and only brought up by conspiracy theorists and academics.

(Technically correct, the best kind..)