The EU Commission wants to present its regulation to combat depictions of child abuse online on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. This includes the obligation of communication service providers to search all content for suspicious material. This regulation should apply in particular to chat providers and messenger services such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram & Co.
The “ Digital Society ”, which advocates for fundamental rights and consumer protection in the digital space, is now planning a protest and is sounding the alarm in a press release! But the CCC – Chaos Computer Club warns against the use of client side scanning and describes it as an “excessive and misguided monitoring method”.
Protest against the EU Commission's plans for chat control
–Press release: Digital Society–
Next Wednesday, May 11th, the EU Commission will present its draft regulation to combat depictions of child abuse on the Internet. The “Prevent chat control” campaign will accompany the publication of the draft with a small protest at 2 p.m. in front of the EU Commission representation in Berlin.
The responsible EU Commissioner, Ylva Johansson, has announced that the core of the planned regulation should be an obligation for providers of communications, especially messenger services, to search, filter and, if necessary, report all communications content for suspicious material. The term “chat control” has been established in Germany for these plans.
The Commission's plans would require the widespread use of comprehensive surveillance and control technologies - to a degree that was previously difficult to imagine in Europe.
In particular, encrypted communication should not be excluded. However, since with end-to-end encryption the providers themselves have no access to the content during communication, such plans can only be implemented through a de facto ban on effective encryption or through the use of new technologies such as 'client-side scanning'. (CSS), which carry out monitoring directly on the users' devices. This technology is not only error-prone but also very susceptible to misuse and creates new security gaps directly on users' devices. Leading cryptographers have already strongly warned against the use of this technology .
The Commission's focus on the supposed technical solution to the complex social problem of child abuse and the dissemination of such representations is fundamentally misguided. Shifting responsibility onto communications service providers, placing all users under general suspicion and undermining telecommunications secrecy cannot be an alternative to responsible and targeted police work in a constitutional state.
We (the Digital Society) will therefore be protesting against the plans on Wednesday, May 11th at 2 p.m. with a small protest in front of the EU Commission Representation, Unter den Linden 78 in Berlin-Mitte, and will be critical of the further EU legislative process accompany.
The EU Commission wants to screen all chat messages
-Press release: Chaos Computer Club-
On Wednesday, May 11, 2022, the EU Commission is expected to publish the draft law on so-called chat control. The plan is to have an AI-based check of all news content and images directly on our devices. So-called client-side scanning would be an attack on any confidential communication.
The draft envisages examining all communication content directly on our devices and, if suspected, expelling it. This client-side scanning would not be the first excessive and misguided surveillance method to be justified in the fight against child abuse.
There is no doubt that those affected by child abuse need to be better helped, but chat control is an excessive approach, easy to circumvent and starts in completely the wrong place. An unprecedented surveillance tool is to be introduced without any expected success in terms of the actual goal.
Completely missed the target
The proposed bill would require every device to scan every message for images of child abuse and criminal contact with children. If such content is detected in a message, it should be forwarded directly to a control authority or the police.
Mass scanning not only attacks confidential communication at its very foundations, but would also be ineffective: Criminals are already using distribution channels that would not be affected by these scans and will easily evade the scans in the future:
public hosts instead of the messengers targeted by the Commission - not least because messengers are completely unsuitable for exchanging large file collections. They also encrypt the data before exchanging it.
For this reason alone, the planned surveillance will not prevent the further distribution of images of abuse.
There is no trustworthy communication without trustworthy devices
It's not just journalists and whistleblowers who depend on trustworthy communication - it is a fundamental right and an important cornerstone of all of our IT security. For communication to be truly trustworthy , two conditions must be met:
- Your own device must be of integrity and may not forward content to third parties
- The encryption must be secure so that we do not have to trust the network
With telecommunications secrecy and the fundamental right to guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of information technology systems, chat control overrides two fundamental fundamental rights. Users lose control over what data they share and with whom. They lose basic trust in their own devices.
It is not yet clear who should define and control the detection algorithms and databases. Such a non-transparent system can and will be easily expanded once introduced. It is already foreseeable today that the rights exploitation industry will be just as interested in the system as governments hostile to democracy. What is even more frightening is the innocence with which it is now being introduced.
Error rates lead to a flood of images at checkpoints
An “artificial intelligence” that checks for abusive content will also incorrectly flag content as illegal . Even the smallest error rates would lead to massive amounts of incorrectly “recognized” and rejected messages: In Germany alone, well over half a billion messages are sent every day . Even extremely “good” detection rates would lead to the rejection of several thousand messages per day.
The likelihood of expulsion naturally increases when there is a private, completely legal and consensual exchange of images between adults and young people. Young adults can already look forward to the inspection authorities estimating their age. The dull concern about whether our messages are being diverted, who is viewing them and how safe they are from misuse will affect us all.
At the same time, mountains of irrelevant material will pile up at the checkpoints and prevent officers from carrying out important investigative work. Investigating authorities are already overloaded with the data that is being generated today . There are no successes in the investigation, and materials found are not even deleted . Effectively eliminating these deficits would be the most important goal in the fight against child abuse. Instead, the commission wants to rely on mass surveillance and the promise of salvation from “artificial intelligence”.
Chat control should be fundamentally rejected as a fundamentally misguided technology.
Sources: Digital Society , Chaos Computer Club
Also read:
Hate, hate speech, fake news: EU decides on rules for digital services
If you enjoyed this post and value the importance of well-founded information, become part of the exclusive Mimikama Club! Support our work and help us promote awareness and combat misinformation. As a club member you receive:
📬 Special Weekly Newsletter: Get exclusive content straight to your inbox.
🎥 Exclusive video* “Fact Checker Basic Course”: Learn from Andre Wolf how to recognize and combat misinformation.
📅 Early access to in-depth articles and fact checks: always be one step ahead.
📄 Bonus articles, just for you: Discover content you won't find anywhere else.
📝 Participation in webinars and workshops : Join us live or watch the recordings.
✔️ Quality exchange: Discuss safely in our comment function without trolls and bots.
Join us and become part of a community that stands for truth and clarity. Together we can make the world a little better!
* In this special course, Andre Wolf will teach you how to recognize and effectively combat misinformation. After completing the video, you have the opportunity to join our research team and actively participate in the education - an opportunity that is exclusively reserved for our club members!
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

