I understand but frankly "doesn't do anything if there is no illegal material" reminds me too much of the old anti-privacy argument "nothing to hide, nothing to fear".
It is about control and purpose, "my OS watches my communications" is true but weird to say because there's an expectation, unless compromised, that the OS is under my control so no problem. A third-party controlling the local scan of all my data specifically to report whatever it wants is a huge problem.
Too often are some specific issues left insufficiently addressed for too long and it seems like the answer ends up like, ok we give up, here's some collective punishment, that should do the trick.
> A third-party controlling the local scan of all my data specifically to report whatever it wants is a huge problem.
And that is exactly my point: you fundamentally can't audit what ChatControl is doing, because you don't have access to the "list of illegal material" (precisely because it is illegal). So whoever controls that list could abuse it.
I see lot of weird arguments like "it's breaking encryption" and "it's destroying democracies". It's wrong. The problem is that it may be abused if your democracy doesn't work as well as it should. And it's good enough an argument to be against ChatControl.
My whole point is that it's not constructive to throw baseless complaints at ChatControl: there is a valid argument against it (still looking for more), and we need to use it.