[hda2]

What you're suggesting is exactly what those corrupt senators want.

The reason why popular E2EE messengers are such a problem for authoritarian governments/regimes is the fact that it's transparent and enabled by default. This means that millions (or sometimes billions) of people have strong privacy without having to know anything about it.

Once E2EE is removed from these messengers, those authoritarians can focus on the rest.

Edit: one thing that really confuses me about this whole war on crypto thing is why would a democratic nation want to remove privacy from people. Don't they understand that democracy is fundamentally predicated on privacy? I have a feeling that they do.

[ehnto]

The next step is of course to vilify those who seek privacy, now that it's not the default, switching the rhetoric to suggest that anyone using encryption is surely doing so to hide illicit activities. Privacy becomes illegal at that point.

[zelphirkalt]

Maybe next, but surely already current step. Many people are already on that rhetoric.