The Joint Declaration was agreed upon at an informal meeting of the European Chiefs of Police in London hosted by the National Crime Agency on 18 April.
Police Chiefs of all EU Member States and Schengen Associated Countries were invited, alongside Europol’s Executive Director.
Here is the declaration (pdf).
I am pretty sure, churches were “tolerated spaces” bevor e2ee was a thing.
God works in encrypted ways
Our societies have previously tolerated a whole lot of spaces where conversations could be had without fear of law enforcement listening in, but many of those have disappeared as communications moved online. Encryption is the only thing that can restore the balance.
Yeah it’s called a private residence and I’m concerned cops don’t see it as a “them free space”
But that’s exactly their point: it it’s legal for them to bug your house when all prerequisites are met. That last part is very important. Without voicing my opinion: that is the current law in many western democracies.
End-to-end encryption means that even with very stringent limitations, they would never be able to listen in. None of the previous spaces “beyond their reach” has been that.
And BTW as far as I know churches have never been this, legally. There was a time when you could find asylum in a church, and you couldn’t be arrested, but they were never barred from law enforcement listening in.
And, for the record, this part is my opinion: end-to-end encryption should be possible, and without backdoors.
And letters. If you go to the stasi museum in Berlin they have the letter opening equipment as proof of how despicable they were.
The West did (and still does) spy on people to a similar extent, they just have been less obnoxious about it (wholesale spying, but no wholesale persecution) so nobody gets too upset and makes a revolution or something.
You don’t even have to go so far.
Several European countries consider physical letters to be confidential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
Strangely enough that confidentiality suddenly no longer applies to other, “newer” forms of communication.
Probably because it’s less easy for security services to ignore.