Chat Control: Your private messages will be scanned
The European Commission is preparing a new law designed to protect children against abuse. The law seeks to prevent the spread of child abuse material by scanning all citizens' messages. Protecting children is essential, but the proposed law would allow governments to scan all our communications, seriously infringing on citizens' rights, and would not actually help address child abuse.
Discover how the chatcontrol proposal would affect you by watching our interactive film on the left.
Speed
The EU commission has proposed a new law to protect children against abuse. The cause is good, but the law itself is bad, because it requires online services with messaging functionality to be surveilled, if there is a possibility for children to use the service or if users could potentially use the service to exchange child abuse material. This will affect many communication services and it will mean that your communication will be scanned, because all users of regular communication services will be treated as suspects for child abuse. More specifically this means that your e-mails, chat-messages, video- and voicecalls will be analysed by algorithms, to determine if they contain illegal content. The analysis will happen directly on your computer/smartphone, so that the algorithms can see what you say/write before it becomes encrypted.
Whan can be done against this proposed law? It is important that more people know about it. Share the link to this page! Chat with others about it and talk with your representatives in the European Parliament about it (or write a nice e-mail to them). It is important that there is a public discussion about this topic, so that politicians realise that the law is a bad idea even though this is for a good cause
If you want to help the campaign, you can join our mailing list. There we discuss actions for informing more people in Denmark about chatcontrol. We also talk about improvements of this website. If you have some good ideas or want to help out, you are also very welcome to join the list. To subscribe to the mailing list, simply write an e-mail to campaign-subscribe@lists.chatcontrol.dk and follow the instructions.
We also recommend that you sign the petition against chatcontrol.
More information
- Updated proposal from 28.3.2024 ๐ฌ๐ง
- Proposal from 12th of September 2022 ๐ฌ๐ง ๐ช๐บ
- Consultation response from IT-Pol Denmark to the proposed law ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- News article on ChatControl (from panoptikon.dk)
- More details about the planned law and timeline ๐ฌ๐ง
- Presentation about ChatControl at BornHack 2022 ๐ฌ๐ง
- Mattias Tesfaye (danish minister of justice) is in favour of the surveillance law. ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Story about a false positive in a chat with a medical doctor ๐ฌ๐ง
- Historic film: Complete telecommunication surveillance under the german occupation ๐ฉ๐ฐ ๐ฌ๐ง
- German alliance against ChatControl ๐ฉ๐ช
- Chat surveilance in China against pro-democratic protests ๐ฌ๐ง
- Stop Scanning Me campaign ๐ฌ๐ง
- If enforced, EU chat control will limit Free Software ๐ฌ๐ง
- Fact Sheet: Client-Side Scanning ๐ฌ๐ง
- Chatcontrol is an acute threat against open source in the EU ๐ฉ๐ช
- Cryptography professor: "The EUโs โchat controlโ legislation is the most alarming proposal Iโve ever read. Taken in context, it is essentially a design for the most powerful text and image-based mass surveillance system the free world has ever seen." ๐ฌ๐ง
- Swedish anti-chatcontrol website ๐ธ๐ช
- Dutch anti-chatcontrol website ๐ณ๐ฑ
- Portugese anti-chatcontrol website ๐ต๐น
- Slides from the Bornhack 2023 presentation ๐ฌ๐ง
- The german child protection association declares their disagreement with chatcontrol ๐ฌ๐ง
- Apple explains to a child protection organisation why scanning of encrypted data is not a good idea ๐ฌ๐ง
- President of the Signal Foundation: "Apple's statement is the death knell for the idea that it's possible to scan everyone's comms AND preserve privacy." ๐ฌ๐ง
- UK law similar to chatcontrol failed to pass with client-side scanning because the technology doesn't exist. ๐ฌ๐ง
- A very long list of criticisms of chatcontrol ๐ฌ๐ง
- Bornhack 2023 talk: Chat Control โ the next months will be critical ๐ฌ๐ง
- The danish government supports the law but the whole opposition is against it ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Investigative Journalism: Who would benefit from chatcontrol? ๐ฌ๐ง
- Europol would like to have all pictures even if they are not related to child abuse ๐ฌ๐ง
- Danish cryptographers: "Chatcontrol will undermine the whole idea of end-to-end encryption" ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Berlinske: The EU wants to check all digital content to fight child pornography ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Jyllands-Posten: The EU wants to check all digital content to fight child pornography ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- IDA and other organisations: The EU chatcontrol proposal is total surveillance ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- The complete opposition to the government: You are violating the spirit of the constitution ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Open letter to minister of justice Peter Hummelgaard ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Cybernauts on Chatcontrol ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Scandal: The EU-Commissionen uses microtargeting to spread misinformation about chatcontrol on X ๐ฌ๐ง
- Dutch technology expert: "The commission used religious and polical beliefs to categorize users for targeted advertisement" ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Berlinske thinks: The support for mass surveillance highlights yet another blind spot in the government's understanding of democracy ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- European Data Protection Supervisor: "there is a very broad and almost unprecedented consensus between the different groups of stakeholders, including data protection bodies, legal experts, academia, industry and civil society, national legislators and law enforcement authorities that the proposal is not only ineffective, but also harmful" ๐ฌ๐ง
- EU-countries disagree on law against child sexual abuse ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Oh, the irony: "Going-Dark" working group is working in the dark ๐ฉ๐ช
- Evidence collected by the Commission in support for voluntary chatcontrol is insufficient ๐ฉ๐ช
- 2023: A good year for privacy, a bad year for chat control ๐ฌ๐ง
- Thorn's software is nowhere near as good as advertised to classify child abuse material. ๐ฌ๐ง
- European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption ๐ฌ๐ง
- Chatcontrol 1.0 extended until April 2026 ๐ฌ๐ง
- German book: Direkt vor unseren Augen. The book explains what is really happening in the world of criminal pedophiles and why politicians have the wrong ideas. ๐ฉ๐ช
- Analysis of the updated chatcontrol proposal ๐ฌ๐ง
- Open Letter from Cryptographers: The updated chatcontrol proposal is still based on unrealistic ideas ๐ฌ๐ง
- History of the chatcontrol law from 11th of May 2022 to May 2024 ๐ฌ๐ง
- New chatcontrol proposal: The users are forced to accept being surveilled or else they will not be allowed to share pictures, videos and links ๐ฌ๐ง ๐ซ๐ท ๐ฉ๐ช
- Global Encryption Coalition says: [Chatcontrol] will not solve the problem of the online spread of child sexual abuse material, but will introduce significant security risks for all citizens, companies, and governments. ๐ฌ๐ง
- Strong increase of false positive detections for CSAM ๐ฉ๐ช
- Chat Control: Horse Trading While Nobody is Watching ๐ฌ๐ง
- Hungary's upcoming Council presidency means that chatcontrol is far from dead ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- "Upload Moderation" undermindes End-to-End Encryption ๐ฌ๐ง
- Open letter from many politicians: Reject the chatcontrol proposal! ๐ฌ๐ง
- EU ministers want to exempt themselves from surveillance ๐ฌ๐ง
- Edward Snowden warns against chatcontrol: This can lead to ยปtotal surveillanceยซ ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Most suspects for "child pornograpy" are minors ๐ฉ๐ช
- EU going dark group: The surveillance plan for the new EU Commission has been leaked ๐ฌ๐ง
- A member of the EU Commission admits: Chatcontrol vil break encryption ๐ฌ๐ง
- No One Wants "Chat Control" ๐ฌ๐ง
- European Ombudsman: The commission has conducted maladministration ๐ฌ๐ง
- Slides from Bornhack 2024 presentation ๐ฌ๐ง
- Chronology of a hypothetical future with chat control ๐ฌ๐ง
- Updated open letters from researchers: Chat control is still unacceptable ๐ฌ๐ง
- Switzerland: Chat control threatens rights of swiss citizens ๐จ๐ญ ๐ซ๐ท ๐ฉ๐ช ๐ฎ๐น
- EDRi: Protection of children on the internet should be based on empowerment of children and not exclusion ๐ฌ๐ง
- There's No Security Backdoor That's Only For The "Good Guys" ๐ฌ๐ง
- What is encryption and why is it key to human rights? ๐ฌ๐ง
- Chinese hackers demonstrate why Peter Hummelgaard's chat control is a risky and bad idea ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- USA: The FBI recommends to use end-to-end encryption because of chinese hackers that are listening in on american servers. ๐ฌ๐ง
- Finish parliament: "a model such as the one proposed would in fact lead to mass surveillance of communications and would weaken the protection of confidentiality of communications at EU level." ๐ฌ๐ง
- Comment: Chat control is mass surveillance ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Save Encryption campaign in the UK ๐ฌ๐ง
- Polish Presidency proposes to scrap detection orders from CSAM regulation ๐ฌ๐ง
- First Porn, Now Skin Cream? โAge Verificationโ Bills Are Out of Control ๐ฌ๐ง
- Hummelgaard wants to ban encrypted messaging services even though he uses them himself ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- Lars Andersen: The EU wants to wiretap your phone with "chatkontrol" ๐ฉ๐ฐ
- U.S. Officials Called Signal a Tool for Terrorists and Criminals. Now Theyโre Using It ๐ฌ๐ง
- End-to-end encryption protects children ๐ฌ๐ง
- EU Council: No agreement in sight ๐ฉ๐ช