The EU still cant agree on chat control  but it's not over yet

Date:
Thu, 12 Dec 2024 17:34:58 +0000

Description:
The controversial CSAM scanning plan keeps being rejected for a lack of
majority in the European Council. Here's what we know so far.

FULL STORY
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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.

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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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/the-eu-still-cant-agree-on-
chat-control-but-its-not-over-yet

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