The controversial chat control legislation is back on the agenda of the Council of Europe. Under the Hungarian presidency, work on drafting the legal text will begin on Sept. 4, 2024. The legislation, which provides for the mass monitoring and scanning of private communications, is seen by many privacy and human rights organizations as a threat to the fundamental rights of citizens. Earlier this year the bill, possibly in response to strong criticism, was suddenly withdrawn from the agenda. It is now working on a revised version, but experts remain critical.
During the previous vote in the Council of the European Union in June, opponents of the law managed to form a narrow blocking minority. Supporters of chat control then obtained 63.7% of the required 65% of the votes needed to form a qualified majority. Since then, governments previously opposed have indicated they will vote in when the next vote is taken. According to report from Euractive, France would also be converted and vote in favor of the proposal in its current form.
Since the last vote, a number of changes have been made so that only images and URLs would be scanned by governments under the new law. Nevertheless, the law would be devastating to the privacy enjoyed in private conversations in chat apps, according to human rights groups and opponents of the new law. EU politician Patrick Breyer stresses that mass surveillance is not a good approach to fighting child pornography and sexual abuse. He points out that scanning private messages and chats is not effective in stopping the distribution of child pornography material (CSEM). For example, Facebook has had a system of chat monitoring for years, but the number of automated reports continues to rise every year, peaking at 22 million reports in 2021.
Breyer argues that mandatory chat monitoring will not detect the perpetrators who record and share this material. These perpetrators do not use commercial e-mail, messenger or chat services, but organize themselves through self-organized secret forums with no monitoring algorithms. Moreover, perpetrators often upload images and videos in encrypted archives and share only the links and passwords. Chat control algorithms cannot recognize encrypted archives or links.
Similarly, leading privacy expert Alexander Hanff, who wrote a thesis wrote on the subject, points to the lack of evidence that the bill will be effective in combating child pornography and sexual exploitation. He argues that the proposal will not only enable mass surveillance, but will also lead to the criminalization of consensual sexual content. He also argues that actual perpetrators are likely to circumvent surveillance by using technologies such as VPNs.
The next few months are all-important for the bill: further progress will be discussed on Oct. 10 and 11, and on Dec. 12 and 13 there will be a voted on the final text. Under Hungary's current presidency, which is a strong supporter of the measure, there is a real threat that the legislation will pass without the necessary fundamental revisions.
