r/StopChatControlEU

GitHub (free, MIT licensed): https://github.com/Nothingman333/pgp-for-web-chats

Been following the Chat Control situation here for a while and wanted to do something practical instead of just doomscrolling about it. This won't fix the legislation, but if a message is PGP-encrypted client-side before it ever leaves your browser, scanning the platform's copy of it doesn't reveal anything.

It's a browser extension that adds a lock button next to the message box on WhatsApp Web, Discord, Gmail, or pretty much any chat site. Encrypts to a saved contact's key before sending, decrypts automatically on the other end. No server, no account, everything happens locally.

Not pretending this is a silver bullet: metadata (who's talking to whom) is still visible to the platform, messages aren't signed yet, and it hasn't had a professional security audit. Full list of limitations is in the README, didn't want to oversell it. It's meant as a practical layer on top of the apps people already use with the people they already talk to, not a replacement for Signal if you need something audited.

Not on the Chrome Web Store yet, install instructions (takes about a minute) are in the repo.

I made this alone (with my friend Claude) and am the only person who worked on it, treat it with the skepticism that it deserves:

What it is: a Firefox extension that encrypts in the extension and decrypts messages in place, on whatever transport you're already using. Discord, Gmail, a forum, Reddit. It has no idea what site it's on and doesn't need to — the ciphertext is just text, so you paste it wherever you'd paste anything.

No account, no server, no network requests of any kind from the extension.

You and the other person exchange public keys directly, once.

Why I built it: the EU's Chat Control regulation would require messaging platforms to scan private messages before they're encrypted — on your own device, whether or not you're suspected of anything. You can't have both client-side scanning and end-to-end encryption; if a message can be inspected before it's sent, it was never private. This is a small working example of the other model: there's no server to mandate scanning at and no hook in the client for one.

How it works, briefly:

• Your identity is two keypairs (X25519 for key agreement, Ed25519 for signing), generated locally and never transmitted.
• You and a contact swap public keys over any channel — DM, email, read aloud over the phone. Doesn't need to be secret.
• Each message gets a fresh random key. The message is encrypted once with it; a copy of that key is sealed separately for each intended reader.
• There's no "to:" field. The sealed copies are anonymous blobs — your client finds yours by trying. An observer can't tell who the recipients are or how many are real.
• Every message is signed, so a group member can't forge one from someone else.

What it does NOT protect you from — please read this part:

• No forward secrecy. One shared key per contact, derived once, never rotated. Anyone who extracts your private key can read every message you have ever exchanged with that contact, including ones captured years ago.
• Your keys are protected only by your OS. They're non-extractable (extension code can't export them), but they sit unencrypted in a local SQLite file. Anything running as your user account can read them. There is no passphrase on the stored identity.
• Decrypted text is rendered into the page. A hostile or compromised site can read it while it's on screen.
• Metadata is fully visible. The platform still sees who you talk to, when, how often, and roughly how much.
• Nobody has audited this. It uses WebCrypto primitives rather than hand-rolled crypto, which rules out a whole class of mistakes, but that is not the same as being reviewed.

If you need protection from a determined, well-resourced adversary, use Signal. This is for putting a floor under the conversations that currently have none, on platforms you don't control.

Links:

• Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/e2encrypt/
• Source: https://github.com/Karlo-Sall/e2encrypt

Source-available under PolyForm Noncommercial (not OSI open source — the license restricts commercial use, so I won't call it open source).

Feedback: I am looking for feedback on 2 things:

1. The core idea, client side encryption agnostic about transport; how would you use it?
2. The user experience, I am a technical person and user experience and privacy does not alwayes go hand-in hand. What could I do to improve the user experience?

Looking forward to hear from you!