Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has "backed away" from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journal

Cross posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/40205739

I’m posting this to hopefully stop the posts that keep appearing, suggesting that progress has been made to defeat chat control. That’s not correct.

The article:

Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journalists and the public not to be deceived by the label “voluntary.”

While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.

“The headlines are misleading: Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized,” warns Patrick Breyer. **“What the Council endorsed today is a Trojan Horse. By cementing ‘voluntary’ mass scanning, they are legitimizing the warrantless, error-prone mass surveillance of millions of Europeans by US corporations, while simultaneously killing online anonymity through the backdoor of age verification.” ** Continue reading here - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/reality-check-eu-council-chat-control-vote-is-not-a-retreat-but-a-green-light-for-indiscriminate-mass-surveillance-and-the-end-of-right-to-communicate-anonymously/

  • ell1e@leminal.spaceEnglish
    3·
    2 hours ago

    I posted this before, but it doesn’t even seem to be voluntary at all, from what I can tell from the draft:

    “Upon that notification, the provider shall, in cooperation with the EU Centre pursuant to Article 50(1a), take the necessary measures to effectively contribute to the development of the relevant technologies to mitigate the risk of child sexual abuse identified on their services. […]”

    “In order to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse effectively, providers of hosting services and providers of publicly available interpersonal communications services should take all reasonable measures to mitigate the risk of their services being misused for such abuse […]”

    These quotes sound mandatory, not voluntary. And let’s look what these technologies referenced are:

    “In order to facilitate the providers’ voluntary activities under Regulation (EU) 2021/1232 compliance with the detection obligations, the EU Centre should make available to providers detection technologies […]”

    “The EU Centre should provide reliable information on which activities can reasonably be considered to constitute online child sexual abuse, so as to enable the detection […] Therefore, the EU Centre should generate accurate and reliable indicators,[…] These indicators should allow technologies to detect the dissemination of either the same material (known material) or of different new child sexual abuse material (new material), […]”

    Oops, it sounds again like mandatory scanning.

    Source: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2025/11/2025-11-06_Council_Presidency_LEWP_CSA-R_Presidency-compromise-texts_14092.pdf

    The new draft seems to pretend better to look less mandatory, but it still looks mandatory to me. Feel free to correct me if somebody can figure out that I’m wrong.