by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-10-18 22:38:15+00:00
"Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of absolutist monarchs. Martin Luther, whose letters had been opened by the Duke of Saxony, raged that "a thief is a thief, whether he is a money thief or a letter thief."

Regulations called for postal secrecy in 1532 and 1573 in Austria's Tyrol, in Prussia in 1685, in the oath of succession taken in 1690 by the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I and in his postal regulation of 1698. Rulers ignored them. Like Britain's Oliver Cromwell, who saw the post as "the best means to discover and prevent many dangerous and wicked designs against the Commonwealth," they justified letter-opening.

It sometimes worked. In 1723, Bishop Francis Atterbury was exiled, partly on the basis of intercepted letters, for trying to put a pretender on Britain's throne. Monarchs got information from their "black chambers" - secret rooms in post offices in main cities into which the mail was brought for opening. London's was in Abchurch Lane, near St. Paul's. Black chambers resembled laboratories. Kettles spouted steam to soften wax seals. Experts took impressions of seals with a soft amalgam to make new ones in case they broke the originals while sliding hot wires under them. Specialists slid thin batons with a long slit into envelopes and twirled letters around them so they could be extracted without breaking the seals.

Austria's black chamber was reputed to be the most efficient. Sacks of diplomatic mail arrived at 7 a.m., the letters unsealed and read, the important parts copied, sometimes by dictation, the letters replaced and resealed and sent to the embassies by 9:30. The employees sometimes erred, however. When the British ambassador in Austria complained that he was getting copies instead of originals, the prime minister, Metternich, coolly replied, "How clumsy these people are!"

But the public knew about the letter-opening and hated it. The pre-revolutionary French assembly, the Estates-General, received complaints from all regions of France and from all classes of society about this invasion of their thoughts. Throughout the 20th century, many nations continued to intercept diplomats' messages, but most seem to have stopped reading their citizens' mail. Not totalitarian governments, though. After World War II, nations paid at least lip service to letter secrecy. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by many countries, holds that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his correspondence." Not all keep their word."

https://web.archive.org/web/20070311121314/http://www.deccan...

Is "the postal service" a "third party"

Of course it is

But that's not what I mean when I use the term "third party"^1. I'm referring to so-called "tech" companies^2

Postal service is generally provided by governments

Governments are the ones drafting the proposed "Chat Control" legislation

It should be obvious using the government as a third party to manage private communication is not ideal

It should also be obvious parties to a communication who want privacy from third parties should be encrypting their own messages not delegating encryption to a third party (who is also encrypting messages for any member of the public, including criminals, as is the case for so-called "tech" companies)

1. AFAICT the "Chat Control" draft legislation seeks to regulate _third parties_ not the parties to the private communication

2. And when I use the phrase "for profit" I'm alluding to the incentive so-called "tech" companies have to frame any debate about "Chat Control" in terms of (a) "private communication" instead of (b) "private communication services provided by third parties to the public". If (b) were regulated by "Chat Control", it might kill their middleman business. But it would have no applicability to (a), namely parties who encrypt their own messages

(b) is a subset of (a)