Subj : EU pressing for scanning
To : All
From : Mike Powell
Date : Thu Aug 07 2025 08:14 am
A "political blackmail" the EU Parliament is pressing for new mandatory
scanning of your private chats
Date:
Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:49:40 +0000
Description:
According to the Council Legal Service, the latest Danish Chat Control
proposal still violates human rights but the Parliament pushes for an
agreement to be found.
FULL STORY
According to a leaked memo, the EU Parliament is pushing to reach an
agreement on the disputed child sexual abuse (CSAM) scanning proposal.
As reported by digital rights group Netzpolitik , during the meeting held on
July 11, the Parliament threatened to block an extension of the current
voluntary scanning interim regulation a temporary law that enables messaging
providers to scan their users' chats if they wish so unless the Council
agrees to mandatory scanning.
"This political blackmail forces a bad choice and contradicts the
Parliament's own stated position against mass scanning ," former MEP for the
German Pirate Party, Patrick Breyer, told TechRadar.
Denmark has reintroduced the controversial bill on the first day of its EU
Presidency. Now, new obligations for all messaging services in Europe to scan
users' chats could be adopted as early as October .
"A more radical version"
First proposed in May 2022, what critics deemed Chat Control aims to halt the
spread of CSAM content online by scanning all communications, especially
encrypted ones.
Over the years, however, the proposal has seen some twists and turns as
privacy advocates, technologists, and even politicians raised concerns.
Experts are especially worried that these new scanning obligations will end
up undermining encryption protections. A crucial security feature that the
likes of WhatsApp, Signal, and Proton Mail use to scramble users' online
communications into an unreadable form and prevent unauthorized access.
As per its first version, all messaging software providers would be required
to perform indiscriminate scanning of private messages to look for CSAM. The
backlash was strong, with the European Court of Human Rights proceeding to
ban all legal efforts to weaken the encryption of secure communications in
Europe.
In June 2024, Belgium proposed a new, more compromising text to target only
shared photos, videos, and URLs, with users' permission. In February 2025,
Poland tried to find a better compromise by making encrypted chat scanning
voluntary and classified as "prevention."
Yet, according to Breyer, the Danish proposal is the "more radical version"
so far. "This proposal includes the mandatory mass scanning of private
communications and aims to break secure encryption by forcing client-side
scanning into your messaging apps. Tellingly, government and military
accounts will be exempt from this intrusive and unreliable scanning," he
explains. Leak: Many countries that said NO to #ChatControl in 2024 are now
undecidedeven though the 2025 plan is even more extreme! The vote is THIS
October. Tell your government to #StopChatControl!Act now:
https://t.co/vmOjnucT9i pic.twitter.com/DmfUqn5amk July 31, 2025
The leaked memo also confirms that the EU Council Legal Service still
believes the current proposal violates Europeans' fundamental rights as "the
core problems of access to communication for potentially all users remained
unchanged."
Moreover, many countries that opposed Chat Control in 2024 seem to be leaning
towards an agreement. The nations welcoming and supporting the Danish
proposal include Italy, Spain, and Hungary. France also said that "it could
essentially support the proposal."
Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, Luxembourg, and Romania
currently remain undecided or in need of a review with their local
parliament.
All the governments need to finalize their evaluations by September 12, when
the next meeting is set to take place. The goal, however, is to finally
deliberate on the bill on October 14 (see page 31 of the agenda ).
What's certain is that the push for having legal access to citizens'
encrypted data is a major priority for EU lawmakers. At the end of last June,
the EU Commission also published the first step within its ProtectEU
strategy, which looked to enable law enforcement bodies to decrypt your
private data by 2030.
======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/a-political-blackmail-the-e
u-parliament-is-pressing-for-new-mandatory-scanning-of-your-private-chats
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