The EU wants to have all private chats, messages, and emails automatically searched for suspicious content, generally and indiscriminately. The stated

Messaging and Chat Control

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2021-05-27 19:30:11

The EU wants to have all private chats, messages, and emails automatically searched for suspicious content, generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance through fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence. On 26 May 2021, a majority of MEPs in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted in favor of the agreement allowing for the voluntary use of chatcontrol by online services providers. Now, the European Parliament will take the final vote on Chatcontrol in July or August 2021.

In 2020 the European Commission proposed “temporary” legislation aimed at allowing the search of all private chats, messages, and emails for illegal depictions of minors and attempted initiation of contacts with minors. This is to allow the providers of Facebook Messenger, Gmail, et al, to scan every message for suspicious text and images. This takes place in a fully automated process and using error-prone “artificial intelligence”. If an algorithm considers a message suspicious, its content and meta-data are disclosed automatically and without human verification to a private US-based organization and from there to national police authorities worldwide. The reported users are not notified.

Some U.S. providers of services such as Gmail and Outlook.com are already performing such automated messaging and chat controls. Through a second piece of legislation, the EU Commission intends to oblige all providers of chat, messaging and e-mail services to deploy this mass surveillance technology. At the same time, a representative survey conducted in March 2021 clearly shows that a majority of Europeans oppose the use of chat control  (Detailed poll results here).

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