Chat Control on steroids is under way

It’s year 2030 and the Europol Democracy Enforcement Team raids you for being in possession of a Google Pixel cell phone with an open source operating system. You are charged with the possession of encryption technology without a license and sentenced to 5 years.

Sounds too far fetched? That has kinda already happened in France by the way to a Canadian businessman who sold modified Google Pixels. He worked for a Canadian tech company Sky ECC, that sold very secure phones. Since drug dealers obviously also wanted secure phones its distributors were charged all around Europe.

The CEO remains free in Canada to this day because he did nothing illegal according to Canadian laws. It is an interesting story.

Cops used a strategy known as warrant shopping and it allowed them to take down a company operating legally, as long as that company was breaking laws in at least one other country. Canadian courts didn’t authorize a warrant, so Canadian cops called their French colleagues to seize the servers and issue an international arrest warrant for the Canadian phone dealer. And so a Canadian phone salesman working for a legal Canadian company in Spain found himself inside a prison in France.