“Chat control regulation”

Patrick Breyer:

The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence

The EU wants to oblige providers to search all private chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious content – generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance by means of fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence. 

Chat control 2.0 coming up

A majority of the Members of the European Parliament adopted the chatcontrol regulation on 6 July 2021 allowing providers to scan communications voluntarily. So far only some unencrypted US services such as GMail, Meta/Facebook Messenger and X-Box apply chat control voluntarily. But this is not the end of the story: The European Commission announced that it will propose follow-up legislation that will make the use of chatcontrol mandatory for all e-mail and messenger providers. This legislation will be presented an 2 March 2022 and would also apply to so far securely end-to-end encrypted communications services. However, a public consultation by the Commission demonstrated that the majority of respondents, both citizens and stakeholders, were opposed to an obligation to use chat control. Over 80% of respondents opposed its application to end-to-end encrypted communications. As a result, the Commission postponed the draft legislation to Q1 2022.