Why Do Governments Still Want Encryption Backdoors?

Meredith Whittaker says governments have tried to get through encryption since the crypto wars of the 1990s. She calls the pattern for me, but not for thee: governments that depend on encryption for themselves still want a way into everyone else's messages.

The UK is sending threatening signals, and nothing that large is underway in the United States right now. India's SIM binding rules could force Signal to weaken protections around identity. In Europe, a proposal called chat control keeps coming back. It would make services scan messages for illegal content in the name of child protection. A Canadian law could let the government order a company to strip encryption, with a gag so outsiders would not know who received the order or who complied. Privacy then depends on code that sits behind corporate secrecy and government classification.