(continued)

- On the other hand, governments including Poland, Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Estonia, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have long said they can only agree to a deal that protects encryption and rules out mass surveillance. Finland also recently joined this 'blocking minority';

- The latest text - which has been put forward by the current stewards of the EU Council - Hungary - does NOT achieve that (even though Hungary have falsely claimed that it does);

- Now, we are hearing from several directions that Hungary sees tomorrow's live-streamed vote of the EU's Justice & Home Affairs Ministers as a chance to publicly shame the blocking minority countries, falsely suggesting that they don't care about children;

- Rather than trying to actually broker a meaningful and sustainable deal to protect children online while also upholding privacy, the Hungarian presidency seems to have preferred to engage in strong-arm tactics;

- Perhaps even worse still, there are indications that many of the pro-Chat Control countries are endorsing this dangerous and undemocratic strategy of Hungary;

- I have never seen a strategy like this: where a Presidency knows a public Ministerial vote will fail, but they do it anyway to sow discord;

- So what can you / we all do?

- I'd suggest that we need to continue to show governments like Hungary, Sweden, Ireland and Spain that they are ignoring the consensus of cybersecurity and human rights experts (e.g. edri.org/our-work/most-critici…) and that Hungary's latest text still undermines end-to-end encryption;

- We also need to give our support to the countries that have listened to science and evidence, and are waiting for a proposal that is lawful and would actually work before giving their support;

Is this the most criticised draft EU law of all time? - European Digital Rights (EDRi)

An unprecedentedly broad range of stakeholders have raised concerns that despite its important aims, the measures proposed in the draft EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation are fundamentally incompatible with human rights.

^{European Digital Rights (EDRi)}

So, based on what we saw at the preparatory vote last week, well done and thank you to these governments for demanding that any EU CSA Regulation must be proportionate, lawful, feasible and evidence-based! 👏

- Poland
- Germany
- Austria
- Slovenia
- the Netherlands
- Czechia
- Finland
- Estonia
- Luxembourg.

Tomorrow's meeting will be live here: video.consilium.europa.eu/home…

I really hope the governments of Europe stay strong and listen to cryptography experts about the dangers of Chat Control.

Government officials tell people to trust experts all the time in regards to decisions on public health and the economy, but themselves are ready to ignore expert testimony to pass a law that would see the creation of an unprecedented mass surveillance system in Europe.