BERLIN: Several dozen parliamentarians from European countries have voiced their concerns over the European Commission’s plans for a so-called “chat control” law, reported German news agency (dpa).
EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson presented the proposed Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse in May 2022. It is designed to curb the spread of material showing the sexual abuse of children.
The law would make it compulsory for social media platforms to scan private encrypted chats on social media platforms for certain identifiers which might flag child grooming or the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and to report any suspicious activity. Under current law, this monitoring of online activity is voluntary.
Critics call this “chat control”. They see it as an attempt to scan all communication on the net, including encrypted messages, and they fear mass surveillance.
The 30 signatories to the document criticising the proposed law state that although combatting sexualised violence against children is a high priority for them, they believe the proposal formulated by the commission would lead to serious breaches of privacy.
They argue the law would oblige providers to introduce software to check the content of communications, undermine end-to-end encryption and result in the scanning of personal cloud storage.
On the website of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe – a much larger body that is not part of the EU but which counts EU states among its members – every member has the opportunity to sign a petition posted there, based on an initiative by Konstantin Kuhle, deputy leader of the Free Democratic Party parliamentary group in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag.-Bernama
