EU members couldn't reach an agreement, yet again, on the European Commission's proposal to scan all your private communications to halt the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Deemed Chat Control by its critics, the draft bill has been a contentious matter since the beginning. Despite the changes the proposal has undergone, experts keep warning against the severe implications of indiscriminately scanning all chats – including those encrypted – on people's privacy and data security.
Today, December 12, 2024, the Hungarian EU Presidency held the first public voting on the regulation proposal which again failed to attract the majority. This means further work is needed before submitting the draft bill to Parliament for negotiations.
🇬🇧Again no majority for #ChatControl +++ New Commissioner Hahn defends it – unlike his own country +++ Numerous governments (AT,DE,SL,NL,LU,CZ,PL,EE,FI) publicly criticise proposed indiscriminate #masssurveillance of all users +++ Watch the recording: https://t.co/QYznKPfFe8 pic.twitter.com/xeiz33erqcDecember 12, 2024
Despite all recognizing the need to find a balanced solution to these crimes, out of the 27 EU member nations, 10 countries spoke against the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) in its current form.
The German representative, for example, noted how accessing encrypted communication isn't the right approach to fix the problem.
Luxembourg also pointed out the existing legal and technical challenges to the current provisions, including that monitoring of communications needs to respect proportionality rules per the European Charter of Human Rights. "Our opinion is that current detection rules will lead to general indiscriminate surveillance," he added.
Austria, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, and Finland also reiterated the need for their country to abstain from the vote based on similar privacy and security implications.
Belgium, previously among the undecided and then in-favor list, also joined the governments against the proposal "given that we currently have a caretaker government, so we cannot take a stance on this issue," said a Belgian representative.
What's next?
Lawmakers have implemented some changes to the EU CSAM bill since it was first presented in May 2022 amid growing criticism from the privacy, tech, and political benches.
As per the latest version, communication service providers – including encrypted messaging apps and secure email services – are required to scan all the photos, videos, and URLs you share with other users upon users' permission. Yet, you must consent to the shared material being scanned before being encrypted to keep using the functionality.
This so-called "upload moderation" provision still compromises people's privacy and security, according to experts. Hence, the privacy backlash remains strong also from within the tech industry.
As per the European Pirate Party's data (see tweet above), most EU countries are already backing up the proposal in its current form. These include nations like France, Italy, and Portugal that previously were either undecided or strongly against it.
All EU members expressed a strong determination to find a solution to halt child sexual abuse-related crimes, so we can expect further developments coming from this front over the next weeks.
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