The European elections have ended, and the European football tournament is in full flow; why not allow bulk searches of people's private communications, including encrypted ones? Activists around Europe are outraged by the proposed European Union legislation.
The EU governments' vote on Thursday in a significant Permanent Representatives Committee meeting would not have been the final obstacle to the legislation that aims to identify child sexual abuse material (CSAM). At the last minute, the contentious question was taken off the agenda.
However, if the EU Council approves the Chat Control regulation later rather than sooner, experts believe it will be enacted towards the end of the difficult political process. Thus, the activists have asked Europeans to take action and keep up the pressure.
EU Council deaf to criticism
Actually, a regulation requiring chat services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to sift through users' private chats in order to look for grooming and CSAM was first put out in 2022.
Needless to say, privacy experts denounced it, with cryptography professor Matthew Green stating that the document described "the most sophisticated mass surveillance machinery ever deployed outside of China and the USSR.”
“Let me be clear what that means: to detect “grooming” is not simply searching for known CSAM. It isn’t using AI to detect new CSAM, which is also on the table. It’s running algorithms reading your actual text messages to figure out what you’re saying, at scale,” stated Green.
However, the EU has not backed down, and the draft law is currently going through the system. To be more specific, the proposed law would establish a "upload moderation" system to analyse all digital messages, including shared images, videos, and links.
The document is rather wild. Consider end-to-end encryption: on the one hand, the proposed legislation states that it is vital, but it also warns that encrypted messaging platforms may "inadvertently become secure zones where child sexual abuse material can be shared or disseminated."
The method appears to involve scanning message content before encrypting it using apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger, or Signal. That sounds unconvincing, and it most likely is.
Even if the regulation is approved by EU countries, additional problems may arise once the general public becomes aware of what is at stake. According to a study conducted last year by the European Digital Rights group, 66% of young people in the EU oppose the idea of having their private messages scanned.
