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An important victory – but we still need to stop Chat Control.
The Council of Ministers in the EU has, after three years, now reached a common position on Chat Control. The requirement for mandatory scanning (including end-to-end encrypted messaging services) has been removed, which is a major victory. The EU Council failed to implement mandatory mass surveillance. However, in its proposal, they are laying the groundwork for mass surveillance in the future.
What happens now?
The Council will now enter negotiations with the European Parliament, led by the European Commission. We urge the Parliament to stand firm in the trilogue negotiations and not deviate an inch from its previous position, demanding: no mass surveillance whatsoever without suspicion and a court order, no ID-verification requirements, and no censorship of legal content.
The EU Council is preparing for mandatory mass surveillance and censorship
The Council’s version of Chat Control includes voluntary scanning, vaguely worded legislation that may entail requirements for age verification and mandatory ID checks (even for end-to-end encrypted services), and an article stating that the requirement for mandatory scanning shall be reconsidered every three years. They also introduce a new infrastructure for blocking material, where it is up to each member state to block what they consider illegal. At the same time, a massive EU center is being established to work exclusively on this. All in all, this indicates that the EU Council is aiming to build an infrastructure for mass surveillance, and the legislative proposal is written in a way that opens the door to it.
The EU Council’s Chat Control version
- The EU Council’s Chat Control version introduces a new type of scanning for so-called new material and grooming. This means that AI will scan people’s conversations, photos and videos, in search of criminal content. This will result in enormous numbers of false positives, and people’s private lives will move from an AI detection to being examined by employees at a new EU center. This is mass surveillance and people’s private lives will be scanned without any suspicion and without a court order. This scanning is carried out in cooperation with American companies and can at any time be used to scan for virtually anything; Europol has already requested broader scanning and wants access to material that is not illegal.
- Every three years, the European Commission will challenge the law and attempt to force mandatory scanning (even for end-to-end-encrypted services). Messaging services (including end-to-end encrypted) must take “all reasonable measures” to reduce the risk of their services being misused, including implementation of age verification. This means that the EU may require ID checks and ban anonymous use of messaging services and social media. This poses problems for people who criticize those in power in authoritarian countries, for whistleblowers who want to leak documents, and for sources who wish to speak anonymously with journalists.
- A new infrastructure for blocking material is introduced, where it’s up to each of the member states to issue blocking orders for what they consider illegal. This implies that content that is illegal in one country will also be blocked in a country where it is legal. Once this infrastructure is in place, it also opens the door to a slippery slope when it comes to censorship.
Stop Chat Control
From the outset, Chat Control was a proposal that aimed to introduce mass surveillance. That ambition is clearly still present within the Commission and among many of the member states in the Council. The Council failed to introduce mass surveillance but has succeeded in paving the way for new attempts. This applies not only to future proposals for mandatory chat control scanning every three years. This is part of a broader development in which private and secure communication is being challenged by forces seeking to introduce mass surveillance. ProtectEU is a rebranded Chat Control, aimed at banning encryption. National laws are trying to do the same. We need to put a stop to these attempts here and now.
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