Security News > 2023 > March > German Digital Affairs Committee hearing heaps scorn on Chat Control
Europe's proposed "Chat Control" legislation to automatically scan chat, email, and instant message communications for child sexual exploitation material ran up against broad resistance at a meeting of the German Parliament's Digital Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Chat Control 2.0 would make content scanning mandatory, even for encrypted communications - which would mean either content scanning prior to encryption or encryption keys managed by the service provider instead of the end user.
Chat Control 2.0 scanning would also be applied to cloud storage services.
The EU plan has been vigorously opposed by academics, rights groups, and privacy-focused technology vendors like Tutanota, which noted the opposition to Chat Control 2.0 in Germany's Digital Affairs Committee hearing.
Ella Jakubowska, policy advisor at European Digital Rights, said [PDF] the scanning proposal would likely violate the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Digital Services Act, and the General Data Protection Regulation, among other laws.
Breyer, in response to the German hearing, said, "With Chat Control , the EU is planning a mass surveillance system that is so extreme that it exists nowhere else in the free world. The only country that practices such indiscriminate searches is authoritarian China."