European chat control law offers to analyze your messages, even encrypted ones

The European Union is set to adopt new rules that would make mass scanning of digital messages, including encrypted ones, mandatory. On Thursday, EU governments will adopt a position on the bill, which aims to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The vote will determine whether the proposal has enough support to move forward in the EU legislative process.

The law, first introduced in 2022, would implement an “upload moderation” system that would analyze all of your digital messages, including shared images, videos and links. Each service required to install this “verified” monitoring technology must also request permission to scan your messages. If you do not agree, you will not be able to share images or URLs.

As if that didn’t sound crazy enough, the proposed legislation appears to both endorse and reject end-to-end encryption. First, it highlights how end-to-end encryption “is a necessary means of protecting fundamental rights,” but then goes on to argue that encrypted messaging services could “inadvertently become secure areas where content child pornography may be shared or disseminated.

The proposed solution is to leave messages wide open for analysis, but somehow without compromising the layer of privacy offered by end-to-end encryption. This suggests that the new moderation system could achieve this by analyzing the content of your posts. Before apps like Signal, WhatsApp and Messenger encrypt them.

In response, Signal President Meredith Whittaker said the app would stop working in the EU if the rules became law because the proposal “fundamentally undermines encryption”, regardless of whether it is scanned before encryption. . “We can call this a backdoor, a front door, or ‘download moderation,'” Whittaker writes. “But whatever we call it, each of these approaches creates a vulnerability that can be exploited by hackers and hostile nation states, removing the protection of unbreakable mathematics and putting a high-value vulnerability in its place .”

Several organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the The Center for Democracy and Technology and Mozilla also signed a joint statement urging the EU to reject proposals to analyze user content.

Privacy advocates aren’t the only ones sounding the alarm about the proposal. This week, dozens of MEPs wrote to the EU Council to express their opposition to the proposal. German MEP Patrick Breyer also weighed in on the bill, saying “indiscriminate searches and error-prone leaks of private chats and intimate photos destroy our fundamental right to private correspondence.”

According to Breyer, new discussions around the discussion control law did not come out of nowhere. He says advocates of controlling the discussions are now moving forward to take advantage of the period after the European elections “when public attention is less and the new European Parliament is not yet constituted.”

In a statement to The edge, Breyer also points out that the Belgian presidency ends later this month and that the country’s current interior minister has been at the forefront of the discussion control bill. “Last year, partisans failed to achieve a majority,” Breyer says. “This may be their last opportunity.”

If the legislation gains support, negotiations will begin between the EU Parliament, Council and Commission to develop the final text of the law. But even with support from European governments, advocates of controlling the talks may still struggle to move it forward. Last year, a poll by the European Digital Rights Group (EDRi) suggested that 66% of young people in the EU disagreed with policies allowing internet service providers to analyze their messages.

“Many lawmakers understand that basic rights prohibit mass surveillance, but they don’t want to be seen as opposing a program designed to combat CSAM,” Breyer says. “My message is that children and victims of abuse deserve measures that are truly effective and will stand up in court, not just empty promises, technological solutionism and hidden agendas. »