installing microscotch...

“Today, the European Parliament allowed the suspicionless mass scanning of private communications (“Chat Control 1.0”) to pass, a measure it had rejected twice in March.

Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes.

As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028.”

“A symbolic exemption was adopted for encrypted communications—though in practice, service providers do not scan these anyway.

Furthermore, while a majority of voting MEPs wanted to restrict the scanning of private communications strictly to suspects identified by the judiciary (322 to 255 votes), this amendment likewise fell short of the required absolute majority.”

Dr. Patrick Breyer, civil rights activist and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP), warns of the consequences: “The fact that Chat Control is moving forward against the will of the majority of voting MEPs is a farce and damages democracy. Our children are the real losers in this undemocratic process.

The passage of a genuine, permanent child protection regulation is now in serious jeopardy. The Council will never agree to a desperately needed paradigm shift as long as they can simply stick to the old approach of suspicionless scanning at the whim of the tech industry.”

Despite the legislative defeat, Breyer remains defiant regarding the upcoming negotiations: “Today’s vote on the interim regulation was a setback, but the political battle over the permanent ‘Chat Control 2.0’ is just getting started.

The resistance we saw in Parliament today was so strong that finding a majority for permanent, suspicionless mass scanning in future negotiations is a complete pipe dream.”

what’s next?

“The interim regulation passed today will remain in effect until 2028, or until an agreement on a permanent regulation is reached. Negotiations for the permanent law will resume in September.

The core dispute between the EU Parliament, member state governments, and the EU Commission remains the scanning of private chats: should it be indiscriminate, or targeted at criminal suspects?”

“Talk of averting a “protection gap” is therefore highly misleading.

The most effective law enforcement tools—court-ordered wiretaps, user reports, and the scanning of public platforms and cloud storage—were never at risk and remain fully intact.

The only practice that was temporarily banned since April was the indiscriminate, warrantless searching of private, unencrypted messages of innocent people on a handful of US platforms.”

talks over permanent

“In parallel, negotiations are ongoing for a permanent regulation to protect children from sexualized online violence (the “CSAM Regulation” or “Chat Control 2.0”)

In these talks, the EU Parliament is pushing for a paradigm shift in how we approach online child safety, demanding:

Mandatory, targeted detection orders against actual criminal suspects, rather than blanket mass scanning left to the tech industry’s discretion.

An EU Child Protection Centre tasked with the systematic removal of known abuse material from the public internet.

Strict security standards for messaging apps (“Security by Design”) to prevent cyber grooming.”

This permanent legislation has stalled because EU member states insist on maintaining the outdated approach of voluntary, suspicionless scanning of private communications.

Critics warn that repeatedly extending the interim rules removes the political pressure needed to reach a viable, permanent agreement.

Ultimately, clinging to the status quo threatens to derail real progress on child protection.

Patrick Breyer sums up the problem: “As long as EU governments can use procedural loopholes to continually extend their comfortable status quo of voluntary, indiscriminate mass scanning, they have zero incentive to engage with the Parliament’s targeted, legally sound, and far more effective child protection strategy.

“The Voices of Survivors: “We need privacy to bring abusers to justice”

Survivors of sexual violence explicitly emphasize that untargeted Chat Control did not help victims:

With chat control 1.0 now reading everything on your phone (except end to end encrypted messages), this is only a soft launch of CC 2.0 (which is getting voted on in september) which will scan everything. Welcome to the future of mass surveilance.