Chat Control, a fresh form of surveillance from the EU

Eurocommunists want to launch a user photograph scan on Whatsapp and Messenger. New rules Chat Control, prepared by the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU, provides for a mandatory overview of visual content and private messages in communicators. Artificial intelligence is utilized to monitor private conversations.

Chat Control, a fresh form of surveillance from the EU. As proposed by a service supplier specified as WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal or Telegram, they will gotta implement client-side scanning technologies that check images and videos before they are encrypted and sent. The regulation may be put to the vote on 14 October 2025. The scope of the scan includes visual materials and URLs, excluding text and audio content. As a rule, the strategy is intended to combat crime and “The honest have nothing to fear.”

Detection technologies are to be approved by the European Commission and their operation based on CSAM materials stored on EU servers. Officially, it's about detecting kid pornography. In practice, it is simply a immense danger to our privacy. In communicators with end-to-end encryption, the user will gotta give explicit approval to scan, but in practice the deficiency of consent will limit the functionality of the application.

We can anticipate criminals to simply control to unofficial or abroad communicators that will not require them to scan the content. So what can be detected by the system? For example, photos of children playing in the pool sent between household members. The distribution of votes in the EU Council shows a strong division. Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia presently argue the project.

They support among others. France, Denmark, Italy and Spain, while any countries, including Greece and Romania, stay indecisive. In order to accomplish the qualified majority, it is essential to support countries representing 65% of the population of the Union. The solution is simply a threat to digital security. Signal announced withdrawal from the European marketplace if the rules were adopted and WhatsApp officially declared the proposal to be a breach of end-to-end encryption.

The proposed strategy will make fresh gaps that are exploitable by hackers and hostile states. Callum Voge of the net Society indicated that even a minimal margin of mistake in detection would translate into billions of false alarms per year. The European Parliament has previously adopted a much more mild position which provides for the protection of encryption and the anticipation of control only against suspects under a court order. The final form of the regulation usually requires agreement between Parliament, the Council and the Commission.

Digital rights organisations followthat the adoption of Chat Control can become the foundation for the improvement of mass surveillance infrastructure. The current trends are rather clear, and you can see where most of the alleged "progressive world" is heading, with a return to the standards known from erstwhile systems.

We besides recommend: The Jews lost to Father Guz in court. It was a ritual.