Chat Control 2.0 Through the Back Door

Just before a decisive meeting in Brussels, digital rights expert and former Member of the European Parliament Dr. Patrick Breyer is sounding the alarm. Using a “deceptive sleight of hand,” a mandatory and expanded Chat Control is being pushed through the back door, in a form even more intrusive than the originally rejected plan. The legislative package could be greenlit tomorrow in a closed-door EU working group session.

Personal Opinion

Once again, supranational institutions are attempting to introduce regulations that simultaneously function as instruments of mass surveillance and censorship. The language of “safety” and “risk mitigation” dare to speak of neutrality, but beneath lies a pathological obsession with control. They are effectively framing families and communities as incapable of managing their own destiny. These measures strip people of agency and present them as subjects of the state. What is presented as protection is, in fact, a compulsion to dominate private life under the guise of regulation.

Appeals Court Rejects Prisoner's Lawsuit Over Alleged 354M USD Bitcoin Loss

A federal appeals court has rejected a Florida man’s attempt to recover more than $354 million worth of Bitcoin he claimed was lost when authorities destroyed a hard drive seized during his 2019 arrest for counterfeiting and identity theft.

Personal Opinion

Criminals should pay the price for their crimes, and law enforcement will recover the proceeds of crime. But in this case, it appears the convict is also guilty of suspicion, for failing to unlock an encrypted device.

The problem is that encrypted data is indistinguishable from random noise. It doesn’t prove ownership, intent, or guilt.

The encrypted device at the center of this case wasn’t used to convict him. Other laptops and devices were used for that. But law enforcement decided, without proof, that it didn’t matter. Their distaste for his crimes meant he must also suffer collateral damage. Revenge by any other name. The silence of his data was guilt.

Refusing to unlock a drive shouldn’t be a crime. It should be an extension of the right to remain silent. There may be reasons why someone might not decrypt a device, such as protecting another person’s liberty.

By destroying the drive, law enforcement conveniently destroyed evidence. Evidence, perhaps not for today, but perhaps for later, when technology might break the code. Or not. How do we know if anything was behind that door?

If we accept that silence can be punished, that property can be destroyed without cause, that rights are conditional, then we’re eroding the rights of everyone. Because the system will eventually decide you don’t deserve rights.

Criminal Crypto Use Is Becoming 'Increasingly Sophisticated', Says Europol

The head of Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC), Burkhard Mühl, warned this week that the misuse of crypto and blockchain for criminal purposes is “becoming increasingly sophisticated,” as he pledged continued investment from Europol to support member states in complex and international investigations.

Personal Opinion

My concern — as highlighted by the mismatch of results from different blockchain analysis companies — is that law enforcement may be starting investigations at a desk with these tools, rather than with actual physical crime.

This practice risks more than just misdirection. It opens the door to institutional corruption, where investigators chase low-hanging fruit — wallets that are easy to flag, addresses that fit a narrative — while ignoring harder-to-detect crimes that require real-world legwork. Worse, the output of these tools can be tuned like a dial, shaping public perception and policy around what’s visible on-chain, rather than what’s actually happening.

Blockchain analysis doesn’t speak for the crimes that haven’t been discovered yet. It doesn’t account for off-chain context, coercion, or laundering mechanisms that evade digital footprints. And when law enforcement leans too heavily on these tools, they risk turning forensic investigation into data-driven propaganda — where the story is built around what the tools can show, not what the evidence demands.

I should also add that financial crime is becoming “increasingly sophisticated” not because of crypto, but because that’s the very nature of the cat-and-mouse game that plays out through generations. Every new regulation spawns new workarounds. The tightening loop of compliance will never fully satisfy the bureaucratic impulse to justify its own expansion or the funding that keeps it alive.

Investigations should begin with tangible evidence, not with algorithmic assumptions.