Chat control blitz decision? Hungary wants to push through unprecedented EU plans for messenger mass surveillance after all
As early as tomorrow morning, a majority of EU governments could endorse the controversial draft law on chat control, which had been removed from the agenda in June after massive protests. According to a report by the news service Contexte, the new Hungarian Council Presidency intends to achieve a majority with a small twist, namely removing the searching for unknown material using „artificial intelligence“ from the mandatory measures (as requested by the Netherlands) and making it voluntary for providers. The exact details of the Hungarian proposal have been leaked by Contexte. But the proposal is still to require bulk automated searches in and disclosure of private chats, including end-to-end encrypted chats, that might contain illegal photos or videos. If a user opts out of this “upload moderation” of their chats, they would be blocked from receiving or sending any images, videos and URLs. Signal and Threema have announced they would end their services in the EU if forced to implement the proposed automated monitoring (so-called “client-side scanning”).
Former Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer is now calling on EU citizens to turn to their governments: “In June, under massive public pressure, there was a fragile blocking minority to save our digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption. But now, with no spotlight on government dealings, minimal concessions could tip the scales. Europeans need to understand that they will be cut off from using commonplace secure messengers if chat control is adopted – that means losing touch with your friends and colleagues around the world. Do you really want Europe to become the world leader in bugging our smartphones and requiring blanket surveillance of the chats of millions of law-abiding Europeans?“
Breyer describes the proposal to restrict chat controls to supposedly ‘known’ illegal content as window-dressing: “Regardless of the objective – imagine the postal service simply opened and snooped through every letter without suspicion. It’s inconceivable. Besides, it is precisely the current bulk screening for supposedly known content by Big Tech that exposes thousands of entirely legal private chats, overburdens law enforcement and mass criminalises minors.
The European Parliament is convinced that this Orwellian approach will betray children and victims by inevitably failing in court. It calls for truly effective child protection by mandating security by design, proactive crawling to clean the web and removal of illegal content – none of which is contained in the government proposal on the table now. We have one day to make our governments take a different approach of effective and rights-respecting protection while saving our privacy and security online!”
Breyer’s info portal on chat control: chatcontrol.eu
