Chat Control 2.0

Chat Control is the EU plan to have every text you send to someone else over Signal, WhatsApp, or any other texting app, scanned on your device for illegal content, such as child abuse pictures. This is an exception to the EU ePrivacy Directive. The current version of Chat Control, 1.0, is voluntary, meaning not that you can turn it off yourself, but that Meta, Signal Foundation and others can decide whether to build it into their apps.

On the afternoon of July 9th, after I got home from work, I read on Mastodon about an ongoing vote in Brussels. The vote would stop Chat Control 1.0 if a majority of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted against it. So I opened my laptop and selected 22 MEPs to explain to them why Chat Control won’t protect child abuse victims and is incompatible with human rights.

It didn’t work.

Of course it didn’t. They already heard these arguments, and it probably was never about them either. The reason I send those emails was in the hope that many would do the same thing at the same time and that that would help. Clearly it wasn’t enough.

276 MEPs votes in favour, 314 voted against, 17 abstained, so it passed. Yes, you read that right. They needed 361 votes to stop it from being adopted, because of Rule 68 which was in effect.

And they wonder why people don’t show up during EU elections

Meanwhile, the EU is working on Chat Control 2.0, which won’t be voluntary anymore.

I would have liked to say I’ve fought hard against it, but the fact is that from the comfort of my couch, I used my laptop to send emails to Dutch MPs and MEPs, based on templates provided by fightchatcontrol.eu.

Years ago, together with tens of thousands of others, I occupied highway A12 leading into The Hague against climate change. We demanded the abolishment of subsidies for companies emitting large amounts of CO2, such as airlines and oil and steel companies. What we called subsidies were in fact tax exceptions, but the effect was the same.

I was even arrested, but I wasn’t charged, and they let me go, warning me not to re-join the occupation, which I did as soon as I got back.

thefoggiest.dev/content/img/chatcontrol-infographic-fragment.jpg PPEU Infographic describing and criticizing Chat Control, fragment (Patric Breyer MEP, @Lorna Schütte/CC-BY-3.0 DE

It even seemed to work, at first, because the minister caved. Then there were elections, a new minister came, and we were back at square one.

If I find these things so important, what more can I do? How can I become more effective? If mass demonstrations and reaching out to MEPs have no effect, what more is there to do? Go into politics? But if argumentation won’t make a difference there, what will that do? Go on YouTube and TikTok, perhaps, to create a following there? Go to court?

At the very least I should probably be more aware of ongoing votes without having to rely on Mastodon to trigger me into action.

The infographic on Wikipedia suggests (1) to talk about it ✔️, (2) ask the media to cover it, (3) reach out to MEPs ✔️, and (4) ask your service provider if they are scanning messages. Number four differs from the other three. Instead of fighting Chat Control, just make sure you are immune. But who is my “service provider”? My ISP? Google? Fairphone? Signal Foundation? I can use Ubuntu Touch, but whomever I message isn’t. I could even install Talk on my Nextcloud instance for messaging my family, but I’d just be cutting out Signal Foundation.

The vote on June 9th was rushed through parliament on a day that many MEPs were on holiday. Proponents use shady tactics to get what they want. Chat Control 1.0 will continue into 2028, which supposedly is when 2.0 will be voted on.