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Discussion (36 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless.
This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success.
As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way:
- Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1].
- Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2].
So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse.
I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead..
[1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security...
[2] Page 18, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
First, install a monitoring system "for the kids", then you can expand for surveillance, and repression of incorrect political thought. Just like what China and Russia are doing, which has started the same.
I believe that's a form of corporate greenwashing. If you can prove your claims that you do everything in your power to prevent abusive materials, you're going to get less attention from annoying authorities next time a pedo network/terrorist cell hits the news.
Aside from that, there are a lot of well-meaning people who want to try every little thing to help stop horrific abuse. Police investigations are happening too slowly (if at all); if the police won't help solve the problem, going the civil route may help, even if just a little. I think it's an act of desperation rather than malice. Plus, just like there are plenty of people who say "they've got nothing to hide, I don't need encryption", there are plenty of people who feel like a tech panopticon is worth it if it catches some abuse cases. Besides, in cases like these, scientific evidence often doesn't matter as much as the emotion behind proposals, and most messaging providers couldn't appear more devoid of emotion if they tried.
I don't agree with the idea to scan every message for various reasons. If the police won't investigate criminals with the massive amount of power they already possess, overwhelming them with "abusive" material from an algorithm is only going to make it harder to filter out the real criminals. Plus, if a few large providers do it, that will put pressure on all the other providers that don't do it (see, for instance, that time they arrested the CEO of Telegram for not volunteering information without a warrant, like other messaging providers seem to do).
But, as much as I disagree, I do understand where those people are coming from. And then there are also the blatant comic-book villains that just want totalitarian government control over all information exchange, of course.
They don’t want to combat child abuse, they want to improve their advertising fingerprints.
I don't think the concern here is scanning messages for "incorrect political thought", when people willingly yell their shitty opinions through Twitter/Reddit for maximum exposure. It's not like people are discreet with this shit.
What huge tech companies and the comissioners they lobby with actually want is more avenues of data collection, particularly people that they can't reach as easily.
The ad money gotta flow.
This supposed goal of the legislation never even gets mentioned in the discussions about these laws.
Which seems to go further into that direction you're pointing to as well: this is about scanning all instant messages across the entire EU, for reasons other than protecting children. They don't even discuss actually protecting children.
We (the tech people) have built the perfect tools to centralize and automate control and we're still doing it, mostly for free.
The way things are going, our imagination is probably too poor to visualize the kind of dystopia this can/will eventually grow into.
It's highly unlikely that the general population will revolt against this - fear makes most people docile and compliant, self censoring and obedient. There are many examples of this in the world right now and it's only going to get worse.
We can only push back to postpone this, but the tide is against us and too few really care about these things.
Keyword here is "centralized". Financial interests have pushed gatekeeper-style setups into a crapshoot.
Therefore (part of) the solution is decentralization. P2P everything, web of trust, etc. 'Benevolent' dictators don't cut it anymore.
We're actually speedrunning towards total surveillance.
I don't believe in democracy at all anymore.
The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.
Which itself happened due to a democratic deficit regarding migration.
While most greens and progressives may be against this particular law, I rather doubt that if they introduced a progressive green law for a vote and failed to get a majority, they would immediately give up and never try to get such a law passed ever again.
And I think it's good that nobody has to give up on politics just because they lost once.
Robert Metsola met Ashton Kutcher (co-founder of Thorn, which develops message scanning tech) in March 2023 and posted a photo on Instagram. Kutcher lobbied MEPs hard in favour of strong detection measures.
Content from TFA:
> Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM
> The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution.
> Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo.
> If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note.
> Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”
A conservative from a highly Catholic country (Malta), pushing conservative/far right values. Not surprising but still disappointing, that's what happens when the populace thinks voting far right is a "protest vote" and the election hands them 1/3 of the assembly.
National politicians use the EU to bypass national democracy and then blame the EU publicly to deflect of their true involvement.
Uk was a leading EU country via being one of the largest financial contributors, and UK was behind many of the decisions they later blamed on 'EU Bureaucrats'.
Very few people voted on ID issues or chat control.
"unaccountable EU' and 'taking back control' were key slogans.
And UK were behind the freedom of movement in question, namely the widening to eastern European countries.