The EU's proposal to scan all your private communications to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is back on regulators' agenda… again.
What critics consider chat control has seen many twists and turns since the European Commission presented the first version of the bill in May 2022. The latest development came in October 2024, when the Netherlands made the decision to last minute to abstain from The vote led the Hungarian Presidency of the Council to withdraw the matter from the planned debate.
Now, some two months later, the controversial proposal has returned and is among the issues that the EU Council will debate today, December 4, 2024.
What is the EU CSAM scanning bill?
As mentioned, lawmakers have implemented some changes to the EU CSAM bill amid growing criticism from the political, technology and privacy sectors.
Initially, the plan was to require messaging services and email providers to scan all of their messages for illegal material, regardless of whether they were encrypted, such as WhatsApp or Signal chats, for example, to ensure that communications remain private between the sender and receiver.
Lawmakers suggested employing what is known as client-side scanning, a technique that experts, including some of the best VPN providers and messaging apps, have long warned about, as it cannot be executed without breaking protection. encryption. Even the United Kingdom suspended this requirement under its Online Safety Act until “it is technically feasible to do so.”
In June 2024, the second version of the EU proposal aims to target shared photos, videos and URLs instead of text and audio messages with users' permission. There is a caveat, however: you must consent to shared material being scanned before being encrypted to continue using the functionality.
This wording infuriated privacy experts, with Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, calling so-called 'load moderation' a “rhetorical game.”
📣Official statement: The new EU chat controls proposal for mass scanning is the same old surveillance with a new brand. Whether you call it a backdoor, a gateway, or “load moderation,” it undermines encryption and creates significant vulnerabilities pic.twitter.com /3L1hqbBRgqJune 17, 2024
In September, Politico leaked another version. Communications providers would be free to decide whether or not to use artificial intelligence to flag images and text chats as suspicious. However, these companies would be required by law to scan all users' chats and report when they find illegal content.
According to the latest data from the European Pirate Party, the vast majority of countries have already expressed their support for the new proposal. Even nations like France, which were previously among the opposing governments, have now joined the list in favor.
At the time of writing, only a few EU members remain undecided (Italy, Portugal and Finland) or against (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia).
However, this could change after the December 4 meeting.
