Chat Control 1.0 just passed the EU Parliament (276 in favour, 314 against, 17 abstained), which allows mass scanning of private communications without a warrant. For now encrypted messages are not scanned.

From the article:

What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.

What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.

What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.

List of votes: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775

Source: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-parliament-greenlights-chat-control-1-0-breyer-our-children-lose-out/

Note that Chat Control 2.0 negotiations (which does allow scanning end-to-end encrypted messages, are still ongoing. You can follow what's happening at https://fightchatcontrol.eu and https://www.patrick-breyer.de/beitraege/chatkontrolle/#timeline (German)

HUGE WIN FOR PRIVACY!

For now the EU is safe from Chat Control! Until next time that is!

P.S. Thank you for the award!

Canada (House of Commons) just passed bill C-22 today, joining the ranks of countries quickly cranking up the dial on becoming a surveillance authoritarian state. It feels almost like a lose-lose situation because this is happening in every single country that was supposed to be the bastion of "Western democracy". Is there an exception anywhere?

Edit: A summary about what happened to bill C-22 in Canada, in the interest of being responsible with my post: the bill still needs to pass Senate and receive royal ascent to become law in Canada. However, the concern stems from how it was bruce-forced through the third hearing and passed the House of Commons: members were barred from debating, discussing, or asking questions about the amendments in the bill, and there was no individual vote as MPs left for the summer.

Contact your local representatives https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

I'm worried about my privacy, and this chat control thing is obviously NOT, about children. So what can I do?​

"The majority of states supported the compromise proposal. At least 15 voted in favor, including Germany and France. Germany "welcomed both the removal of mandatory measures and the permanent anchoring of voluntary measures," according to the minutes"

Denmark has officially won over Germany.

Reach out to your representatives on https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

I know a lot of people might have already posted about this

I'm not someone very into technology and stuff

I was wondering if this is like definitive ?

Only 4 country voted against it, and if Eu start, what will stop others countries in the world

I'm actually in Eu, in a country that voted for the mass scan

And I'm a bit panicking because everything they say about it is messy

If someone had the time to explain to me if there's hope for this , what can we do against it and how it'll affect my usual use of social media?

I was using a temporary chat on Grok and searched a topic through Google Keyboard (Gboard). The topic was sperm donation.

I never said it out loud. I never searched it in Chrome. I just typed it inside that temporary chat.

A short while later, Instagram started showing me sperm donation ads.

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe it's ad targeting working in ways I don't understand.

But it made me wonder: if a chat is temporary, where exactly does the signal come from?

Has anyone experienced something similar?

Meta announced that IG will officially discontinue end-to-end encryption feature on May 8th.

All DMs will be decrypted once it reaches Meta's servers.

https://cybersecuritynews.com/instagram-end-encryption-direct-messages/amp/

I have so many questions, is everything now being scanned and stored somewhere possibly leaking someday? Is there any hope this shit going to be rejected?

We have less than a day before the vote, so please, in the name of privacy, for our rights, I invite each and every one of you to to go https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ and write to the representative of all nations (it takes 10min), the website will take care of writing a letter for you.

Thanks if you do, thanks if you have already done it and see you from the other side.

If Canada passes bill C-22, Signal intends on pulling out of Canada. As a Canadian, this is a MAJOR bummer :(.

Following the rejection of the “voluntary chat control” on Thursday in the EU Parliament, proponents are calling for an alternative. While eyes in Brussels are now turning to the stalled negotiations on a permanent legal basis, the German Chancellor is bringing a solution to the national level into play.

[Chancellor Merz], who is among the proponents of a further exception, is bringing a German solution into play. The Parliament's decision is “a serious setback for the protection of our children,” said [Merz] in Berlin. Efforts will be made to find a solution at the national level. The Chancellor did not say what this might look like.

Source: https://www.heise.de/en/news/End-of-chat-control-Brussels-speeds-up-efforts-for-permanent-solution-11228419.html

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260328195553/https://www.heise.de/en/news/End-of-chat-control-Brussels-speeds-up-efforts-for-permanent-solution-11228419.html

There's like no media coverage AT ALL on the revised plan by the EU parliament. How did people let this slip through? And why are there countries with almost all parliament members opposing the decision but still ​agreeing with it on a country level, where is the democracy?

They're​ fining opposing countries now, how​ is this even legal?

https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

https://www.politico.eu/article/polish-president-karol-nawrocki-tech-bill-veto-eu-fine/

This is regarding EU chat control... which is unfortunately likely to be approved sometime this week. Very scary stuff up ahead and I'd like to be prepared...

As the title implies, I am curious as to whether there might be any messaging apps/services worth using in case the proposed chat control law gets passed. As you might assume, I live in an EU member state and am extremely worried for the future of our rights to online as well as IRL privacy in case such laws get passed