Opinion: Proposed EU Chat Control legislation is an attack on the privacy of all citizens

In the midst of torrid year for the EU where it has been criticised for its weak response to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and Donald Trump’s tariff war, you may have missed the news of a pivotal vote that’s fast approaching the Strasbourg parliament.

The proposed Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse, also known as Chat Control, says it aims to fight those proliferating child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online.

While supporting such a noble-sounding initiative might seem like an absolute no-brainer, the way in which this legislation is planned to be implemented will cause far more issues than it claims to solve.

The current Chat Control proposal mandates the scanning of all private digital communications, even those which would have previously been protected by end-to-end encryption.

This automatic examination of every message and file would establish a system of mass surveillance without reasonable suspicion on all 450 million citizens of the EU.

While many supporters of the legislation back it out of a genuine concern for children’s safety and well-being, the bypassing of encryption online would open a permanent backdoor to be exploited by hackers, criminals and hostile state actors and put sensitive financial, medical and private data at risk to leave everyone, including children, far less safe.

Chat Control is also entirely incompatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in which Article 7 and 8 guarantee citizens’ rights to respect of privacy and family life along with the protection of personal data, both core democratic ideals of the bloc.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) are two of many bodies to highlight the glaring issues with the proposal and its contradictions to purported European values, with the ECHR in ruling in February 2024 that the degradation of end-to-end encryption “cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.”

Despite these clear warnings, the EU Parliament is pressing ahead with a vote on the problematic proposal that was first tabled in 2022.

Sophisticated networks of criminals who are creating and distributing CSAM are likely to be largely unaffected by Chat Control as they can easily move communications to platforms outside the EU or onto the darkweb, leaving regular people as the targets of unwarranted surveillance.

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In addition, automated scanners like the ones that will potentially be used in the EU routinely flag innocent content, putting people at risk of false accusations and damaging investigations.

An independent report, commissioned by the EU Parliament itself, found that there are currently no technological solutions that can detect CSAM without resulting in a high rate of false positives while the UN has also warned that mass surveillance fails to prevent abuse and actually leads to children being less safe.

Other ramifications of the removal of online privacy include increased difficulty for journalists in communicating with vulnerable sources and whistleblowers in protecting their identities when revealing important information.

While the safety of children is undoubtedly a vital issue to discuss and a growing problem, removing civil liberties from all citizens and surveilling all private communication is the worst possible course of action to take.

The huge amount of time and money that would go into implementing Chat Control would be much better served in improving resources and training for law enforcement, social workers and parents in recognising and investigating abuse under the principles of reasonable suspicion and cause.

It seems unbelievable that the EU could be considering the installation of such a dystopian framework, but at the time of writing, the majority of member states either support the proposal or are undecided.

Oh, and one more thing. Politicians' devices will be exempt from surveillance due to security risks, the hypocrisy of which just about sums up the proposal.

The European Council will announce its final position on Friday and the earliest possible date for a vote is October 14.

The fate of Chat Control still hangs in the balance so contact your MEPs with any concerns through fightchatcontrol.eu. 

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