EU Agencies to Scan Everyone’s Messages to Prevent Child Abuse Content Distribution

• A controversial EU legislative proposal aiming to prevent child sex abuse material distribution would violate user privacy.
• The new control law will ask internet providers to scan all users’ private messages via social apps, even if they are not suspects.
• Only two EU countries oppose this dangerous CSAM regulation that could be instated in December.

A new control law proposed by European Union (EU) lawmakers plans to scan people’s private messages in an effort to prevent child sex abuse material (CSAM) through private messaging apps like iMessage, Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp, compromising user privacy and security.

This implies requiring providers to detect known CSAM by circumventing message encryption, which raises safety and privacy concerns. This approach means forcing millions of these apps' users to agree to have their sent and received messages verified and photo and video uploads scanned by AI.

The bill, which was due to be endorsed on December 13, 2024, was delayed in Parliament due to disagreements. Only Poland and Germany remained opposed to the privacy-breaching legislation. 

If this new law is adopted, citizens across the EU and anyone worldwide who communicates with them will be impacted, even people who are not suspected of being criminals.

Several civil liberty groups registered opposition when the law was first proposed, including the Internet Freedom Foundation, Mozilla, and the Center for Democracy and Technology. EU’s Civil Liberties committee voted to exclude mass scanning of encrypted messages from the proposed law, but the EU will still enforce the ‘upload moderation’ routine.

Many MEPs have already signed an open letter against the law, which says chat moderation weakens cybersecurity while also acting as a “blueprint for authoritarian states.”

Recently, the European Commission refused a request for a disclosure of a child sexual abuse law document, which was in the public interest, according to a report from the European Ombudsman, who oversees the proper administration of EU institutions.

The EU says this proposal delivers on commitments made in the EU Strategy for a More Effective Fight Against Child Sexual Abuse in tackling CSAM online effectively and creating a European Centre to prevent and counter child sexual abuse.