Chat Control 1.0: Civil Society Mobilizes Against Extending Mass Surveillance – EU Parliament Decision Imminent
- Protest platform fightchatcontrol.eu activated: Citizens urged to contact MEPs immediately.
- EU governments push to extend warrantless mass scanning by US tech giants.
- Criticism: Extension sabotages the EU Parliament’s modern “Security by Design” strategy.
- Patrick Breyer: “We are flooding police with junk data instead of protecting children.”
Following the EU Council’s vote last week to extend the controversial “Chat Control 1.0” (Regulation (EU) 2021/1232), civil society resistance is forming. Activists are calling on citizens to take immediate action and contact Members of the European Parliament via the platform fightchatcontrol.eu. While EU governments are pushing to continue the mass screening of private messages by US tech companies, the European Parliament’s position remains undecided. The draft report by Rapporteur Birgit Sippel (S&D) is expected shortly.
A Tactical Error: Why Extension is Dangerous
Experts warn that extending the “Interim Regulation”—originally intended as a temporary exception—blocks the urgently needed reform of online child protection. In the parallel negotiations on the permanent law (“Chat Control 2.0” / CSAR), the Parliament is demanding a paradigm shift towards targeted investigations with judicial oversight, whereas the Council continues to rely on mass scanning.
“Extending Chat Control 1.0 is a fatal error. As long as the Commission and Council get their desired mass surveillance approved as a ‘temporary solution’ again and again, they feel no pressure to engage with the Parliament’s rule-of-law-based position on the permanent law,” explains digital rights expert and former MEP Dr. Patrick Breyer. “We are cementing a failed model based on black-box AI instead of enforcing modern security standards.”
Council Divide: Concerns from CZ, NL, and IT
While a majority in the Council voted to support the Commission’s proposal for an extension, delegations from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Italy voiced reservations and criticism.
Experts: Flawed ‘voluntary’ AI Chat Control Creates Dangerous False Positives
Cybersecurity experts have previously warned that the proposed “voluntary scanning” expands scanning of private communications to include automated text analysis, using AI to identify ambiguous “grooming” behaviours. They argue this will create a dragnet that ensnares innocent people. “Current AI technology is far from being precise enough to undertake these tasks with guarantees for the necessary level of accuracy.” The letter stated that this expanded scope “only opens the door to surveil and examine a larger part of conversations, without any guarantee of better protection.” It warns of a “high risk of diminishing overall protection by flooding investigators with false accusations that prevent them from investigating the real cases.”
“Privatizing Law Enforcement”
Breyer also warns against the implications of “voluntary” mass scanning of private chats:
“The EU governments are trying to cement a failed approach. While the scanning is formally ‘voluntary’ for providers, the result is the mass warrantless screening of our private communications. We are effectively privatizing law enforcement, appointing US tech giants as sheriffs, and replacing independent judges with error-prone algorithms from Silicon Valley. This is a breach of the fundamental right to privacy.”
Police Overload and “Junk Data”
Experts like Breyer reject the argument that law enforcement would “go blind” without Chat Control. On the contrary, the current practice of indiscriminate mass scanning is hindering effective investigations:
- Operational Overload: Statistics from the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) show that in 2024, approximately 48% of reported content (c. 100,000 chats in Germany alone) was criminally irrelevant—including harmless family vacation photos. This flood of false positives drains resources needed for undercover investigations into organized predator rings.
- Criminalizing Minors: A significant portion of criminal investigations targets minors sharing “sexting” images among peers, rather than organized child abuse networks.
- Technological Dead End: As major providers like Meta increasingly roll out End-to-End Encryption, content scanning is technically becoming obsolete.
The Parliament’s Alternative: “Security by Design”
The activists urge MEPs to stick to their own mandate. The Parliament had previously stated (Report A9-0021/2024) that a prolongation of this regulation “is only justified once.” Instead of mass surveillance, the Parliament proposes effective, fundamental-rights-compliant alternatives in the CSAR mandate:
- Security by Design: Mandatory safety default settings in apps to technically prevent unwanted contact by predators.
- Proactive “Crawling”: An EU Centre should proactively scan the public web and the darknet for illegal material, rather than reading private messages.
- Targeted Investigations: Surveillance of private communication should only occur based on reasonable suspicion against individuals and with a judicial order.
Call to Action
Citizens can now use fightchatcontrol.eu to send protest emails directly to the members of the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE). The campaign targets Rapporteur Birgit Sippel and the Shadow Rapporteurs, including Javier Zarzalejos (EPP), urging them to reject the extension as it stands (e.g., by restricting scanning to suspects with judicial authorization and excluding the most error-prone text or AI-based scanning).
Protest Tool:
fightchatcontrol.eu/en/feed
Information:
chatcontrol.eu/en/feed