Cross posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/40205739
I’m posting this to hopefully stop the posts that keep appearing, suggesting that progress has been made to defeat chat control. That’s not correct.
The article:
Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journalists and the public not to be deceived by the label “voluntary.”
While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.
“The headlines are misleading: Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized,” warns Patrick Breyer. **“What the Council endorsed today is a Trojan Horse. By cementing ‘voluntary’ mass scanning, they are legitimizing the warrantless, error-prone mass surveillance of millions of Europeans by US corporations, while simultaneously killing online anonymity through the backdoor of age verification.” ** Continue reading here - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/reality-check-eu-council-chat-control-vote-is-not-a-retreat-but-a-green-light-for-indiscriminate-mass-surveillance-and-the-end-of-right-to-communicate-anonymously/
Who is promoting this and why is it constantly coming back?
The timeline is here
Currently Denmark pushing it, they hold the EU presidency at the minute. Their minister for justice - Peter Hummelgaard is responsible for the big push and the wording. Specifically trying to pull the wool over the general public. Ireland are next (they take over in January) And the minister for justice in Ireland (Jim O’Callaghan) is also in favour of it.
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights - Right to privacy in the digital age
Thank you.
But what groups are advocating for this? There is clearly a significant campaign behind this. It doesn’t seem at all grassroots.
At a guess, I’d imagine big tech companies are lobbying as most of the information that they use comes from data gathering. Using data directly from texts etc. Leaves them open to court cases.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/12/eu-gdpr-data-law-us-tech-giants-digital
The options are limitless to the politicians regarding money making opportunities pushing x,y and z through once our private correspondence and devices are being scanned.
For example, in years to come insurance companies could refuse to pay out on all sorts of claims using that data. Doctor may have recommended you walk a mile a day and change your diet. You don’t do it, or just miss a day, your life insurance policy is voided. Car crash not your fault, no payout because you missed something else etc.
I couldn’t begin to to guess the amount of ways that this information could be used, but it’s a complete u-turn from what the EU was saying only a few years ago
They still recommend using signal - but only internally.
Which in itself is bizarre.
And exempting themselves from being scanned is just showing what they really think.
I’m trying to learn more about EU politics, and when something like this won’t die after being beat down several times, in the US it’s almost always some industry lobbying organization.
And a problem we have globally, is that there isn’t an organized counter movement in the opposite direction (that privacy is a human right, that this isn’t a path to security, that states need to be restrained and restricted in their tendencies towards authoritarianism).
Without that countermovement, it’s almost inevitable something like this will pass as the lobbying organization can long outlive the current generation of activists or politicians who see the problems with something like chat control.
https://www.corporateeurope.org/en/2025/11/roll-back-digital-rights-prepared-secrecy
Yes, that’s the same with many things. No counter movement.
We will see how transparent it all is
https://transparency.eu/briefing-lobby-transparency-in-the-eu/
We have to be the ones that continue building the movement. Plenty of us already are but with each of us active, and getting others active-connected it will help so much. We all can way more in a healthy way get things done. Let’s not make it easy for them at all.
Getting people to switch to Matrix, & Stoat for real-time collaboration.
Piefed for overview and more organization by having people doing.
Pixelfed, & Loops by Pixelfed for Live-Streaming Incidents.
Also, to stop them infecting people’s minds with their virus
I agree. A proper counter movement is needed.
Big American corporations are heavily lobbying EU council and governments. Transparency is not working, EU council are rolling back on GDPR, massively eroding our privacy, which is irreversible.
With the likes of Trump in charge the US are not trustworthy with any data. The data that they already take illegally is too much.
The UDHR article 12 is supposed to protect our privacy.
We need a counter movement big enough to scare the politicians when they start bending to the Big-Tech. They are not in the least bit worried as things stand now.
Peter Hummelgaard (among others) and his arrogance does not seem even a little concerned about his position.
I know who… all kinds of people in different governments government organizations like in the Netherlands these people: https://organisaties.overheid.nl/46813/mr_drs_HP_Schreinemachers/
He is head of Justice and Security Ministry.
It feels like this is just going to keep coming back, and that it’s being pushed by a centrally organized project. If privacy protections aren’t effectively enshrined in law, inevitably this kind of nanny state surveillance will happen.
2000% true. We will slowly move to a surveillance state. And we end up in the same list like North-Korea, China, etc…
Stop soft giving up. Say yeah they try but we will not let them. Get active and do with others! Brainstorm together!
I posted this before, but it doesn’t even seem to be voluntary at all, from what I can tell from the draft:
“Upon that notification, the provider shall, in cooperation with the EU Centre pursuant to Article 50(1a), take the necessary measures to effectively contribute to the development of the relevant technologies to mitigate the risk of child sexual abuse identified on their services. […]”
“In order to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse effectively, providers of hosting services and providers of publicly available interpersonal communications services should take all reasonable measures to mitigate the risk of their services being misused for such abuse […]”
These quotes sound mandatory, not voluntary. And let’s look what these technologies referenced are:
“In order to facilitate the providers’ voluntary activities under Regulation (EU) 2021/1232 compliance with the detection obligations, the EU Centre should make available to providers detection technologies […]”
“The EU Centre should provide reliable information on which activities can reasonably be considered to constitute online child sexual abuse, so as to enable the detection […] Therefore, the EU Centre should generate accurate and reliable indicators,[…] These indicators should allow technologies to detect the dissemination of either the same material (known material) or of different new child sexual abuse material (new material), […]”
Oops, it sounds again like mandatory scanning.
The new draft seems to pretend better to look less mandatory, but it still looks mandatory to me. Feel free to correct me if somebody can figure out that I’m wrong.
