Reality Check: EU Council Chat Control Vote is Not a Retreat, But a Green Light for Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance and the End of Right to Communicate Anonymously
www.patrick-breyer.deCross posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/40205739
I’m posting this to hopefully stop the posts that keep appearing, suggesting that progress has been made to defeat chat control. That’s not correct.
The article:
Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journalists and the public not to be deceived by the label “voluntary.”
While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.
“The headlines are misleading: Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized,” warns Patrick Breyer. **“What the Council endorsed today is a Trojan Horse. By cementing ‘voluntary’ mass scanning, they are legitimizing the warrantless, error-prone mass surveillance of millions of Europeans by US corporations, while simultaneously killing online anonymity through the backdoor of age verification.” ** Continue reading here - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/reality-check-eu-council-chat-control-vote-is-not-a-retreat-but-a-green-light-for-indiscriminate-mass-surveillance-and-the-end-of-right-to-communicate-anonymously/
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At a guess, I’d imagine big tech companies are lobbying as most of the information that they use comes from data gathering. Using data directly from texts etc. Leaves them open to court cases.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/12/eu-gdpr-data-law-us-tech-giants-digital
The options are limitless to the politicians regarding money making opportunities pushing x,y and z through once our private correspondence and devices are being scanned.
For example, in years to come insurance companies could refuse to pay out on all sorts of claims using that data. Doctor may have recommended you walk a mile a day and change your diet. You don’t do it, or just miss a day, your life insurance policy is voided. Car crash not your fault, no payout because you missed something else etc.
I couldn’t begin to to guess the amount of ways that this information could be used, but it’s a complete u-turn from what the EU was saying only a few years ago
https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/
They still recommend using signal - but only internally.
Which in itself is bizarre.
And exempting themselves from being scanned is just showing what they really think.
I’m trying to learn more about EU politics, and when something like this won’t die after being beat down several times, in the US it’s almost always some industry lobbying organization.
And a problem we have globally, is that there isn’t an organized counter movement in the opposite direction (that privacy is a human right, that this isn’t a path to security, that states need to be restrained and restricted in their tendencies towards authoritarianism).
Without that countermovement, it’s almost inevitable something like this will pass as the lobbying organization can long outlive the current generation of activists or politicians who see the problems with something like chat control.
https://www.corporateeurope.org/en/2025/11/roll-back-digital-rights-prepared-secrecy
Yes, that’s the same with many things. No counter movement.
We will see how transparent it all is
https://transparency.eu/briefing-lobby-transparency-in-the-eu/