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On 28 September 2023 your representatives in the European Parliament will decide on whether to pass bill COM (2022) 209, better known as ‘chat control’.

If implemented, it would allow the EU to force providers of digital communication services to scan all messages from all users of their services, to see if it might, quite possibly, contain anything illegal.

Chat control timeline by @patrickbreyer: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/#timeline

2/5

With chat control, every message you send through a messaging service—from WhatsApp to TikTok—will get scanned.

A note to your child or nanna? Banter with a colleague? A cute selfie to your babe? Snaps of a strange skin rash to your GP? Messages between a lawyer and their client? Between a journalist and her source? All would get scanned.

Generally. Arbitrarily. Without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Without a court order.

3/5

Plus, with chat control, if the (quite possibly proprietary, closed-source) automatic scanning systems decide to do so, your message will get passed on to some random person doing EU admin ... who’ll be able to forward it directly to the European law enforcement agency body in The Hague, Europol

4/5

It’s like having a friendly observer from the EU at your side 24 hours a day, seven days a week, scrutinising every bloody single thing you say and do. In your living room, in your kitchen, on the loo, at work, in the gym, on the tube, at the doctor’s.

Sounds fun? Yeah, me neither.

Listen to the full episode: https://vulnerablebydesign.net/chat-control/

On non-free systems:
Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vulnerablebydesign/episodes/Chat-control--The-Stasi-look-like-amateurs-compared-to-this-shte-e276thn
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chat-control-the-stasi-look-like-amateurs-compared-to/id1589139674?i=1000621642327

5/5

@vulnerablebydesign This is so insane!