How Europe is Betraying Its Own Values

A curious spectre is haunting Europe, though it is not socialism this time; it is the creeping, bureaucratic death of liberty. Across the continent, our political class is flirting with a proposal so flagrantly absurd and authoritarian that one almost wonders if they have read a history book: the mandatory scanning of every private message, from WhatsApp to Signal, from Telegram to your grandmother’s Facebook Messenger. The ostensible purpose—oh, how noble!—is to detect child sexual abuse material and apprehend the perpetrators. Admirable, of course, if only the solution were remotely competent.

Picture, if you will, the utopian scenario these dreamers envision: a paedophile clicks “send” on his phone, the software detects his depravity, alerts Europol, who dispatches officers in heroic fashion, and within hours the criminals are in custody. Simple. Elegant. Problem solved.

But reality, as is so often the case, is less theatrical. The police, already underfunded and overworked, cannot respond to the deluge of alerts this scheme would generate. Many “alerts” will be nothing more sinister than a pair of teenagers sexting—or, heaven forbid, a parent sharing a photo of a child’s sunburn with a relative. Imagine explaining such innocent actions to a police officer. Picture a society where every private joke, every harmless photograph, is a potential crime scene. Would you feel safer? Or violated?

The answer, dear reader, is the latter. You would feel violated. Betrayed by your devices, yes—but far more egregiously, betrayed by those entrusted with your freedom, who have substituted Orwellian oversight for thoughtful protection. And while the authorities wade through mountains of false positives, the real predators, clever and cautious, continue their work far from prying eyes.

Let us not kid ourselves: a few hapless offenders may indeed be caught. But those who actively distribute child sexual abuse material operate in the shadows, on networks and channels that evade detection. Meanwhile, the law-abiding citizens of Europe are subjected to a constant, intrusive gaze. A minority of abusers versus a surveillance state for the innocent. It is a textbook case of policy in pursuit of virtue, landing in disaster.

Numbers, grim as they are, illustrate the absurdity. Studies suggest between 1% and 3% of adults may have deliberately sought such material at some point. Even if we accept the high estimate, that is roughly 13.5 million people across Europe—a horrifying statistic, yes, but still a sliver of a continent of 450 million. Yet the response under consideration treats the 97% as guilty until proven innocent. A legislative overreach so disproportionate it would make even the most flamboyant authoritarian blush.

And it is not merely a question of practicality; it is a question of principle. Europe’s identity, its Enlightenment heritage, its very claim to moral authority, rests upon ideas of liberty, equality, and the rule of law. John Locke argued for natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Voltaire championed free speech. Montesquieu insisted upon separation of powers. Rousseau championed popular sovereignty. Kant rightly called the Enlightenment man’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity.

Measures like ChatControl do not merely infringe upon privacy; they strike at the heart of Europe itself. They undermine free expression, due process, and the very notion of a government accountable to its citizens. If enacted, they would inaugurate a new dark age of totalitarian oversight, a nightmare that Orwell himself would have struggled to imagine.

This is the insidious nature of bureaucratic stupidity: it is both foolish and dangerous, a poison that spreads under the guise of virtue. Liberty is fragile, ever at risk of erosion by those who confuse intrusion for protection. Europe must resist this, not as a matter of convenience, but as a matter of principle. To do otherwise is to trade our hard-won freedoms for the illusion of safety—a bargain that no civilized society should accept.