A key body of European Union lawmakers remains deadlocked over a controversial legislative proposal that could see millions of messaging app users forced to agree to having their photos and videos scanned by artificial intelligence for child sexual abuse material (CSAM ).
Critics of the plan include messaging giants in the tech industry such as WhatsApp. privacy-focused players like Signal and Proton. legal, security and data protection experts; civil society and digital rights groups; and the majority of MEPs from across the political spectrum in the European Parliament. They warn the proposal would break encryption, arguing it poses an existential threat to the bloc’s democratic liberties and fundamental rights such as privacy.
Opponents also argue that the EU plan will fail in its claimed aim of protecting children, suggesting that law enforcement will be overwhelmed by millions of false positives as daily messages from app users are fed through flawed AI-based CSAM detection systems.
On Thursday, a meeting of ambassadors representing the governments of the bloc’s 27 member states was expected to reach a position on the file to open negotiations with the European Parliament after the Belgian presidency put the issue on the agenda of Thursday’s meeting. However, a spokesperson for Belgium’s permanent representative to the EU confirmed to TechCrunch that the item was dropped after it became clear that the governments were still too divided to achieve a qualified majority for a negotiating mandate.
“We intended to reach a mandate at the ambassadors’ meeting today, but it was not yet clear whether we would have the required majority,” said the Belgian representative. “In the last hours before the meeting it was clear that the required qualified majority could not be achieved today, so we decided to remove the issue from the agenda and continue the consultation between member states — continue working on the text. “
This is important as EU law tends to be a tripartite affair, with the Commission proposing legislation and the Parliament and Council debating (and often amending) draft laws until a final compromise is reached. But these so-called tripartite talks on the CSAM scan file cannot begin until the Council approves its position. So, if Member States remain divided, as they have been for about two years since the Commission presented its CSAM scanning proposal, the dossier will remain parked.
Earlier this week, Signal president Meredith Whittaker highlighted her attacks on the controversial EU proposal.[M]and mass scanning of private communications fundamentally undermines encryption. No more,” he warned, accusing state lawmakers of attempting a cynical rebranding of customer scanning to try to hide a plan that amounts to mass surveillance of private communications.
Despite loud and growing alarm over the bloc’s apparent hard-line on digital surveillance, the European Commission and Council continued to push for a framework that would require messaging platforms to scan citizens’ private messages — including from to end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) platforms like Signal — instead of supporting the more targeted searches and carving out E2EE platforms that MEPs proposed in the European Parliament last year.
Last month, details of a revised CSAM proposal released by the Belgians for the consideration of member state governments emerged through leaks, raising new concerns.
Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, who opposed the Commission’s CSAM scanning plan in the first place, argues that the revised Council proposal would require users of messaging apps in the EU to agree to scanning all images and videos they sent to others , through technique design the text sofas as “upload supervision”, otherwise you lose the ability to send images to others. “The leaked Belgian proposal means that the essence of the European Commission’s extreme and unprecedented proposal for initial chat screening will be implemented unchanged,” he warned at the time.
Makers of private messaging apps, including Signal, have also warned they would leave the EU rather than be forced to comply with a mass surveillance law.
In an email to the press on Thursday, Breyer welcomed the failure of several EU ambassadors to agree on a way forward, but warned that this is likely just a stay of execution, writing: “For now the extremists watching between of the EU and Big Sister governments [home affairs commissioner] Ylva Johansson failed to create a qualified majority. But they won’t give up and could try again in the next few days. When will they finally learn from the EU parliament that effective, judicial and majority-competent child protection needs a new approach?’
Also responding to the Council’s setback in a statement, Proton founder Andy Yen made a similar observation about the need to continue the fight. “We must not rest on our laurels,” he wrote. “Anti-crypto proposals have been defeated in the past only to be repackaged and brought back into the political arena again and again and again. It’s vital that privacy advocates remain vigilant and don’t fall for spin and loopholes when the next encryption attack is launched.”
It certainly seems that any celebration of the Council’s ongoing disagreements over the file should be tempered with caution, as member state governments appear to be a hair’s breadth away from achieving the necessary qualified majority to begin talks with MEPs, in which they could be done immediately by pressuring MPs to agree to legislate for mass scanning of citizens’ devices despite their own opposition. “We are extremely, extremely close to a qualified majority,” the Belgian representative told TechCrunch. “If just one country changes its mind, we have a qualified majority and we have a mandate for the Council.”
The spokesman also told us that a final meeting of the EMA next week, the last before its six-month term ends, already has a full agenda, indicating that talks to try to agree the Council’s mandate will therefore come down to Hungary, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council for six months from 1 July.
“As far as we are concerned, as the Presidency, in the coming days — at expert level — we continue to work and to see if the member states that were not satisfied or satisfied with the proposal we will continue to discuss how we can impose a fine – tune in to make it sustainable for everyone,” the spokesperson added. “And then it will be a matter of discussion for the next Presidency.
“As far as we understand, they are willing to continue working on the issue. The Commission is also willing. And the parliament is waiting for us, so we have to.”
