On-device backdoors and pre-encryption scanning
As security bods will tell you, having your network end-point the same as your security end-point is poor practice.
Adding scanning software that you do not control to your security end-point is sub-optimal too.
What backdoored encryption and on-device pre-encryption scanning do is make effective encryption more difficult, but for those who need to send properly encrypted messages, you have to ensure the encryption is done before being entrusted to a compromised communications medium. This makes it inconvenient, which is probably the point, as it means catching the ignorant and unwise who can't be bothered is made easier, and more sophisticated users of encryption stand out for further investigation, as it is difficult to disguise pre-encrypted data, steganography notwithstanding.
If you can't trust you phone or PC, you can fall back on manual methods, as described in this posting by Bruce Schneier.
Schneier.com -- LC4: Another Pen-and-Paper Cipher
Or use a One-Time Pad.
I would fully expect the use of effective encryption to at least be flagged up to 'the authorities'; and it could come to pass that use of effective encryption for any purpose is made illegal.
Steganography is susceptible to detection by statistical methods of increasing sophistication. An adversary might not be able to decode steganographically encoded data, but they cam almost certainly detect that it is there, so it is not a magic wand to make eavesdroppers magically give up and go away.
Currently the pendulum of response to the distribution of information that is illegal to own and distribute (such as CSAM, National Security related secrets, terrorist handbooks etc.) is swinging towards removing everyone's privacy, and possibly other freedoms. If one is to argue against that, one needs a good argument why it should be possible to distribute such material that stands up against the testimony of abuse victims and National Security requirements. Are you happy to be killed by terrorists who successfully concealed their plot; or have your children exploited for the perverse predilections of others? That's a 'big ask' for the ideals of personal freedoms and privacy. Are you willing to be a potential martyr or potentially ruin the lives of your children for the ideal of liberty? If you are, can you convince enough other people to feel the same way?
Personally, I like the 'freedom to encrypt', and to know that the full disk encryption on my PC is not backdoored. But I have not had to make a stark choice, and freedom to encrypt means some people will pay dearly for that freedom. As a society we need to decide how to deal with the question, preferably without emotion-laden debate. Politicians proposing laws is part of that process.
It might seem cold-blooded, but calculations about how much lives are worth are made all the time when determining the cost benefit of road- and railway- safety-related upgrades, and by NICE when determining if drugs should be made available for treatment. I think the same cold-hearted calculations need to be made about the freedom to encrypt. But I'm in a minority, and such a viewpoint is regarded at the very least as lacking empathy, and by some as positively sociopathic.
If the politicians do ban effective encryption, then the UK (or England & Wales) might be a grand experiment in finding out the cost to society of not being able to encrypt effectively. The outcomes are likely to be interesting for academics and other states wishing to do the same, even if challenging for the experimental subjects,
Biting the hand that feeds IT
