The 'Free' World Is Coming for Your Private Messages
Nobody expects China or Iran to protect privacy. But as seen in the European debate over chat control, even nominally free countries are becoming intrusive when it comes to the digital world.
As I write, European Union (E.U.) officials are debating the details of a proposal to either require or pressure tech companies to scan all private messages for child sexual abuse material. Dubbed "chat control," the scheme inevitably entails mass surveillance of private communications—targeting one sort of content for the moment, though it's difficult to see how that would long remain limited in any way. It's an illustration of the continuing decline in online liberty documented in a new report from Freedom House.
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No Right to Private Messages?
As the E.U.'s discussion over chat control heated up over the summer, Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard, a proponent of surveillance, commented, "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services."
Since Hummelgaard's Orwellian comments, which would have necessitated government backdoors into all encryption used by the public, the E.U. has backed off a bit from mandating such access. Current proposals would make private companies liable for the content of their customers' communications, leaving them to choose how to mitigate their legal liability—with scanning messages a likely choice.
"Chat Control is not dead," privacy activist and former member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer commented, "it is just being privatized."
More accurately, private companies are likely going to be jawboned—strong-armed—into doing the government's dirty work. And there's a lot of dirty government work to go around on today's internet.
"Suppression of mass protests, deepening censorship, and threats to free speech fueled the 15th consecutive year of decline in global internet freedom," the U.S.-based Freedom House notes in its report, Freedom on the Net 2025, released November 13.
It's unsurprising that countries already recognized as authoritarian are continuing repressive practices. Nobody expects China or Iran to suddenly develop a taste for protecting online dissent and respecting privacy of communications. More disturbingly though, as seen in the European debate over chat control, nominally free countries are becoming increasingly intrusive when it comes to the digital world.
Online Authoritarianism in the 'Free' World
"In a concerning sign, half of the 18 countries with an internet freedom status of Free suffered score declines during the coverage period, while only two received improvements," according to the report. "People in Georgia experienced the most significant decline among these countries, followed by Germany and the United States."
Georgia made the list by forcing private organizations and media operations that receive foreign funding to register with the government. The government also imposed "criminal penalties of up to 45 days in prison for insulting public officials."
As the report notes, Germany's government has infamously "pursued criminal prosecutions against people who made memes about politicians, invoking laws against insult and hate speech." Such censorship continues even after the replacement of the previous thin-skinned traffic light coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Greens by a grand coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its ally the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the SDP. That suggests there's little appetite among the country's political class for leaving people alone.
In the U.S., "the administration of President Donald Trump," the report says, "detained several foreign nationals for one to two months after revoking their visas over nonviolent online expression" and that the government "threatened or carried out politicized investigations into civil society organizations and media and technology companies, often focusing on their content moderation, editorial decision-making, or forms of speech that are protected by the US Constitution's First Amendment." It should have also included the pressure brought by the previous Biden administration on social media companies to suppress criticism of administration policies and stories inconvenient to the powers that be.
Some countries did register improvements in online freedom. But "of the 72 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2025, conditions deteriorated in 28, while 17 countries registered overall gains." And, as mentioned above, half of the countries ranked as "free" lost ground over the assessed period, while only two improved. Consequences for those targeted for suppression could be severe.
"People in at least 57 of the 72 countries covered by Freedom on the Net 2025 were arrested or imprisoned for online expression on social, political, or religious topics during the coverage period—a record high."
Politicians Want to Regain Lost Control
It's interesting to speculate on why government officials around the world seem so intent on suppressing online speech and monitoring digital communications, but the most likely explanation, to my mind, is the democratization of communications brought about by the internet. People can share ideas—good, bad, or flat-out nuts—with one another without the permission or assistance of governments or established media companies which long dominated mass communication.
"Whereas establishment institutions once exercised an informational monopoly, managing media and mainstream discourse to protect elite interests and perspectives, social media makes such narrative control impossible," Dan Williams, an academic philosopher from the United Kingdom, wrote this week.
Williams builds on arguments advanced by former CIA analyst Martin Gurri, the author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (2014). Gurri believes "technology has categorically reversed the balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age—government, political parties, and the media."
Surveillance and censorship are ways to try to reassert that lost control. By monitoring people's private communications and punishing them for their online statements, government officials, even in countries that once prided themselves on open debate, try to regain power over ideas expressed by the public and the esteem (or lack thereof) in which people regard officialdom.
That's not going to happen. Politicians can't regain status and respect by pushing for mass surveillance and muzzling their critics. They can erode norms around privacy and free speech to punish dissenters. But they undermine their own standing even as they lash out and further alienate the public.
