By Chiara Castro  October 24, 2025

Data sovereignty. Communication security. Strong encryption. These are the words I heard the most in my day at the Matrix Conference in Strasbourg last week.

An event organized by the creators of Matrix, an open-source protocol that developers can use to build decentralized and secure messaging applications, showcased multiple iterations of how organizations have used this federated system.

It was especially interesting to see that, while there are some examples of Matrix-based apps for everyday users, most of those harnessing the power of this protocol are governments.

These include Germany, where Matrix has been used to encrypt the communications of the government, armed forces, and healthcare system; and France, where, starting from last September, all public officials are required to use the Matrix-based Tchap app instead of Signal or WhatsApp.

Even more staggering, perhaps, was seeing representatives for the IT department of the European Commission talking on stage about how they are trialing Matrix to replace Signal and secure their own communications.

Yes, the European Commission, the same body that proposed to weaken people’s private chats with an encryption backdoor, with the infamous Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) bill known as Chat Control. And France is among the 12 countries supporting the proposal, according to the latest data.

All of this struck me – European governments clearly understand how crucial encryption is to preserve privacy and security. Yet, these crucial factors for their own communications seem to be something that citizens will have to make peace with and lose in the name of the common good.

Continues at link below:

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/its-not-about-security-its-about-control-how-eu-governments-want-to-encrypt-their-own-comms-but-break-our-private-chats