GoKawiilThe Chat Control 1.0 law that enables warrantless mass scanning of digital communications has been voted against multiple times by the EU Parliament. And yet, just like a movie zombie, it keeps getting resurrected by various legal sleight-of-hand moves. Yesterday, one of those tricks worked, as Chat Control 1.0 passed (or rather, was not rejected) in a forced re-vote that required an absolute majority (50% + 1) for active refusal. This brings back the law until 2028, and sets a different stage for September's upcoming discussion on Chat Control 2.0.
After the impending publication in the EU Official Journal, online direct-communication platforms will be allowed to mass-scan their users' data without the need for a warrant, under the guise of looking for child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The scanning is not mandatory, but big tech firms will have a legal mechanism to rifle through user data. EU firms have historically refrained from doing so, presenting privacy and data sovereignty as selling points, but the legal door is nevertheless now officially open.
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The obvious platforms where monitoring can now take place will be e-mail and chat services. Immediate examples include Gmail, iCloud, Hotmail, Discord, Instagram, Slack, Teams, Snapchat, Xbox, and Google Chat.
Although the law's scope is for "interpersonal communications services," the legal mechanism might hypothetically extend to some gray areas like Google Drive, where sending someone a link to a cloud file could be within the scope of the law.
It's worth noting that "direct communication" isn't restricted to one-to-one chats, as it includes group chats; just not public or undirected communications. Additionally, EU law enforcement is still beholden to the same warrant requirement as before — Chat Control 1.0 does not grant a blank pass to authorities to mass-scan user data, or request companies to do so without a targeted warrant.
Thanks to two amendments in yesterday's vote, end-to-end-encrypted (E2EE) communications means (ex: WhatsApp) stay exempt. That means that for now, Chat Control 1.0 isn't a commandment to break encryption, something that has been regularly suggested by lawmakers around the world.
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It's as good a time as any to remind people that Instagram messages are no longer E2EE as of May, and that although WhatsApp's messages are encrypted, the service leaks out every single bit of metadata about them — sender, recipient, time, size, etc. As always, Signal is recommended as a privacy-focused communications app.
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