Kinda curious how "child abuse" a remit outside the scope of GCHQ is being used to push for weaking of encrption. Not that I wouldn't love GCHQ to tackle child

Kinda curious how "child abuse" a remit outside the scope of GCHQ is being used to push for weaking of encrption. Not that I wouldn't love GCHQ to tackle child abuse, drug dealers and lots of crimes that the police seem unable or capable of dealing with to noticable effect. That said, police gained powers on the back of `terrorisim` so can see why GCHQ would want to push thru some changes on the back of the police scope of work. What irks is the premise that it is using the minority of people to penalise the majority of people. That and the issue of challanging anything that uses the "think of the children" angle is often countered with "why do you hate children, why you defenfing peodos...." and that kinda see's many who would speak out, very much put off. Shame leasons not learned though as weakening encryption or removing it only aids and helps criminals who cover a large percentage than the child abuse numbers. For example when digital mobiles came about, GCHQ and others pushed to weaken the enryption and saw a certain amount of the digits in the encyrption fixed as 0, so whilst it was advertised as 56bit encryption at the time, it was in reality 48bit (ogoing from memory on this one so maybe a bit off here or there). But crux being handicapping encryption enables a wider array of criminal activity above and beyond the scope of children being purported to protect. One aspect overlooked, this will only enable identification of some child abuse, it won't prevent it as by time digital media of the abuse is made, the child is already abused. That in itself is sad and tragic and focusing upon the aftermath over prevention at source is perhaps an area that should be addressed as I worry that things like this, if they came to pass to weaken encryption per-say will be seen as a magic solution that misses the root causes of such crimes.