Report from Euronews
In Brief – German opposition to the latest version of the EU child sexual abuse material (CSAM) message scanning bill, dubbed the Chat Control regulation, has led to it being pulled from the agenda of a meeting of EU justice ministers. The draft Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse requires messaging services to scan users’ chats for CSAM material before the content is encrypted. This has raised concerns from privacy and civil liberties advocates since its introduction in 2022, as well as from cryptography experts who contend that there is no technical way to circumvent encryption on behalf of state security agencies without undermining privacy and security for all users. Germany had opposed the proposal in recent years, but their position was not certain following a recent change in government. Their stance has been key because the member states backing the regulation could not reach the needed threshold of 65% of the EU population without Germany. In announcing her government’s position, the German Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection said, “Private communication must never be under general suspicion,” and “the state must also not force messengers to scan messages en-masse for suspicious content before sending them.” Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, and Poland were already dissenting from the proposal put forward by the Danish presidency.
Context – The battle over encryption between defenders of privacy and civil liberties, and those arguing that strong encryption protects criminals, is decades old. Beyond the EU’s Chat Control bill, similar criticism has been leveled against the EARN IT Act in the US, and both the Online Safety Act and the Investigatory Powers Act in the UK. In January, the UK Government reportedly demanded that Apple give its security services the ability to access fully encrypted data uploaded to Apple’s iCloud storage by any user globally, creating a heated diplomatic and technology industry standoff. A wearied Starmer Government eventually withdrew the demand. However, there are reports that they are again pressing Apple.