The – so far, without success – The legal journey of the EU digitization bill on sexual abuse materials (CSAM) could see developments this week while legislators should discuss a new proposal. Wednesday, February 5, 2025. The presidency of the Polish council proposed a new version of the bill which seeks to respond to existing confidentiality problems.
Controlled from the cat judged by its criticisms, the bill is a means of stopping the propagation of CSAM content online by scanning the communications of all people. According to the proposal of New Pologna Poland, however, the scanning would voluntarily become and classified as “prevention”.
Despite a step in the right direction in the battle to protect encrypted communications, confidentiality experts are not fully sold on this solution, warning that some problems remain.
“Major progress but not yet acceptable due to mass surveillance,” said Patrick Breyer of the German pirate party. A similar point of view was also divided by Elina Eickstädt, spokesperson for Chaos Computer Club, who stressed how the new proposal poses more questions than they answer – Netzpolitik, group of digital rights.
The end of anonymity online?
Cat’s control has seen many twists and turns since the European Commission presented the first version of the bill in May 2022.
The initial plan required messaging services and email suppliers to scan all the messages from all people at the appointment of illegal equipment-it doesn’t matter if they were encrypted, like WhatsApp or Signal Chats.
A watered down version would later adjust the target to shared photos, videos and URLs on user authorization. However, these changes were not enough to convince the majority of legislators, the last December vote not yet attracted the necessary majority.
Poland’s proposal, as Breyer of the Pirate Party pointed out, represents a “big step forward” to protect the fundamental right of Europeans to keep their private digital correspondence.
He said: “This would protect secure encryption and thus ensure our safety smartphones. However, three fundamental problems remain unresolved.”
The new proposal from the new #ChatControl proposal by Good Good will be discussed on Wednesday: #ChatControl would remain voluntary. Would be safe #encryption. But the volunteer #ChatControl 1.0 would always be general mass monitoring. (1/2)January 31, 2025
To start, Breyer explains that, although Meta, Microsoft or Google can decide whether or not to implement CSAM scan, this could still cause non -targeted mass monitoring. This is why the European Parliament proposed a different approach, which involves making research compulsory but limiting them to people or groups related to sexual abuses on children.
Breyer is also concerned about article 6 of the proposal, which would prevent users under the age of 16 from installing popular applications, including encrypted messaging applications, social media, videoconference services and even games in games line. Although this minimum age is easy to get around, for example by using one of the best VPN services, Breyer thinks that it will also detect adolescents instead of making them stronger.
Finally and above all, Poland’s proposal has not changed article 4 (3) controversial, for which users would be prohibited from configuring anonymous emails or messenger accounts. “This would inhibit, for example, sensitive cats linked to sexuality, anonymous media communications with sources (for example, the denunciators) as well as to political activity,” warns Breyer.
What is the next step?
As mentioned above, legislators should discuss the new cat’s control proposal on Wednesday.
Asked about the probability that it is likely that this version finally wins the number of necessary votes, Breyer told Techradar to be skeptical about the majority of which agrees to reduce compulsory cat control.
He said: “The proposal is likely to go too far for the majority of the hardliner of the EU governments and the EU commission whose positions are so extreme that they will completely refuse the victims rather than Accept a proportionate, resistant court and politically acceptable approach.
