A European Union rule change could see millions have their private messages scanned by the bloc. For over three years, European Union institutions have been arguing about mandatory chat monitoring.
The Commission wants to require internet services to scan their users' content for criminal activity and forward it to authorities if there is suspicion of criminal activity. Parliament calls this mass surveillance and demands that only unencrypted content from suspects be scanned.
The Parliament threatened to block an extension of the current voluntary scanning interim regulation – a temporary law that enables messaging providers to scan their users' chats if they wish so – unless the Council reaches an agreement.
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"This political blackmail forces a bad choice and contradicts the Parliament's own stated position against mass scanning ," former MEP for the German Pirate Party, Patrick Breyer, told TechRadar. Denmark has reintroduced the controversial bill on the first day of its EU Presidency.
According to Breyer, the Danish proposal is the "more radical version" so far.
"This proposal includes the mandatory mass scanning of private communications and aims to break secure encryption by forcing client-side scanning into your messaging apps. Tellingly, government and military accounts will be exempt from this intrusive and unreliable scanning," he explains.
The Polish Council Presidency had proposed making chat control voluntary rather than mandatory, and exempting encrypted communications.
Twenty of the 27 EU member states participated in the discussion. All "expressed a comprehensive reservation for review." German officials stated somewhat smugly: "Otherwise, the familiar mood emerged."
A year ago, President Macron flirted with the idea of approval and now France says it "can basically support the proposal."
Belgium says chat control of encrypted communications is "a difficult issue nationally." Estonia also reports a "national conflict between the authorities responsible for security and data protection advocates regarding encryption and client-side scanning."
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