> Such laws cannot be enforced. Enforcement can only be arbitrary.

I am against criminalizing cryptography and largely agree about it being infeasible given the extent of proliferation and ease of replicating it/am playing devil's advocate:

Laws banning math related to manufacturing nuclear weapons can and has been enforced. It's important to take legal threats like ChatControl seriously and not just dismiss it as absurd/unenforceable overreach, even if that's likely true.

Banning math in relation to nuclear weapons was typically very specific and most often involved hardware export controls.

The key note with what the previous poster said was 'arbitrary', meaning the laws will end up a nonsensical mess because the maths have huge amount of industrial, commercial, and personal uses and suddenly one range of use is banned leads to situation where law enforcement tends to go after particular groups for who they are, not what they've done.

> Such laws cannot be enforced.

Tech companies can certainly be forced to build surveillance into their chat applications and operating systems. This doesn't have to be about backdooring crypto.

> Enforcement can only be arbitrary.

Sure, but it would be forced upon the vast majority of the population. Tech-savvy people will find ways to circumvent it, so will criminals, but that doesn't make mass surveillance of all others any less scary.

The argument was that ChatControl is a threat to the rule of law.

Because enforcement would be so arbitrary.

I also think the public generally doesn't understand much of cryptography. It's thought of as some sort of dark art. And to be reliant on computers. But some dice and basic arithmetic will suffice -- though you still shouldn't roll your own crypto system.

Ha, a lovely new meaning for “rolling your own crypto”