GoKawiilThe controversial mass surveillance of private messages in Europe is coming to an end. After the European Parliament had already rejected the indiscriminate and blanket Chat Control by US tech companies on 13 March, conservative forces attempted a democratically highly questionable maneuver yesterday to force a repeat vote to extend the law anyway.
However, in a true voting thriller today, the Parliament finally pulled the plug on this surveillance mania: With a razor-thin majority of just a single vote, the Parliament first rejected the automated assessment of unknown private photos and chat texts as “suspicious” or “unsuspicious”. In the subsequent final vote, the amended remaining proposal clearly failed to reach a majority.
This means: As of 4 April, the EU derogation will expire for good. US corporations like Meta, Google, and Microsoft must stop the indiscriminate scanning of the private chats of European citizens. The digital privacy of correspondence is restored!
The Myth of a Legal Vacuum
This does not create a legal vacuum—quite the opposite. Ending indiscriminate mass scanning clears the path for modern, effective child protection. Fearmongering that investigators will be “flying blind” is unwarranted: Recently, only 36% of suspicious activity reports from US companies originated from the surveillance of private messages anyway. Social media and cloud storage services are becoming increasingly relevant for investigations. Targeted telecommunications surveillance based on concrete suspicion and a judicial warrant remains fully permissible, as does the routine scanning of public posts and hosted files. User reporting also remains fully intact.
Digital freedom fighter and former Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) commented on today’s historic victory:
“This historic day brings tears of joy! The EU Parliament has buried Chat Control – a massive, hard-fought victory for the unprecedented resistance of civil society and citizens! The fact that a single vote tipped the scales against the extremely error-prone text and image search shows: Every single vote in Parliament and every call from concerned citizens counted! We have stopped a broken and illegal system. Once our investigators are no longer drowning in a flood of false and long-known suspicion reports from the US, resources will finally be freed up to hunt down organized abuse rings in a targeted and covert manner. Trying to protect children with mass surveillance is like desperately trying to mop up the floor while leaving the faucet running. We must finally turn off the tap! This means genuine child protection through a paradigm shift: Providers must technically prevent cybergrooming from the outset through secure app design. Illegal material on the internet must be proactively tracked down and deleted directly at the source. That is what truly protects children. But beware, we can only celebrate briefly today: They will try again. The negotiations for a permanent Chat Control regulation are continuing under high pressure, and soon the planned age verification for messengers threatens to end anonymous communication on the internet. The fight for digital freedom must go on!”
The Next Battle: The Return of Chat Control and Mandatory ID
Despite today’s victory, further procedural steps by EU governments cannot be completely ruled out. Most of all, the trilogue negotiations on a permanent child protection regulation (Chat Control 2.0) are continuing under severe time pressure. There, too, EU governments continue to insist on their demand for “voluntary” indiscriminate Chat Control.
Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering vulnerable groups such as whistleblowers and persecuted individuals.
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