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Reality Check: EU Council Chat Control Vote is Not a Retreat, But a Green Light for Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance and the End of Right to Communicate Anonymously (www.patrick-breyer.de)

submitted 2 weeks ago by cm0002@europe.pub to c/privacy@lemmy.ca

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm posting this to hopefully stop the posts that keep appearing, suggesting that progress has been made to defeat chat control. That's not correct.

The article:

Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journalists and the public not to be deceived by the label “voluntary.”

While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.

“The headlines are misleading: Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized,” warns Patrick Breyer. **“What the Council endorsed today is a Trojan Horse. By cementing ‘voluntary’ mass scanning, they are legitimizing the warrantless, error-prone mass surveillance of millions of Europeans by US corporations, while simultaneously killing online anonymity through the backdoor of age verification.” ** Continue reading here - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/reality-check-eu-council-chat-control-vote-is-not-a-retreat-but-a-green-light-for-indiscriminate-mass-surveillance-and-the-end-of-right-to-communicate-anonymously/

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[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 4 points 2 weeks ago

Patrick Breyer is a European treasure.

[–] phil@lymme.dynv6.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

The "voluntary" aspect will be just like when Don Corleone makes "an offer that he can't refuse".

What changed in the German stand the earlier from "That's not acceptable, that won't happen under our watch"? I vaguely read somewhere (?) that there might have been a deal with the French about something completely different in exchange of support. Is there any information on that?

[–] jaselle@lemmy.ca -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For the record, it's possible to implement age verification with zero-knowledge proofs. IIRC, California has a proposal for this. It's a myth that surveillance and encryption are compatible, but it's also a myth that age verification necessitates a loss of privacy or anonymity.

[–] phil@lymme.dynv6.net 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Unless there's a proper assessment, ZKP looks a bit like a magic wand to a very complex problem. Provided that it's done right (how exactly?), it might turn to a superb fingerprint facilitating tracking and surveillance for every one. Eg. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-alone-are-not-digital-id-solution-protecting-user-privacy?language=en.

[–] jaselle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I'm only arguing that such a magic bullet is possible. Every objection this article raises seems like it is a straw man criticism -- they're imagining potential flaws in a zkp system of their own design. Take this one:

What ZKPs don’t do is mitigate verifier abuse or limit their requests, such as over-asking for information they don’t need

If the only info available is y/n "I am a minor," then this isn't possible.

or limiting the number of times they request your age over time.

well... we could just limit this! The user's browser needs to cooperate for this anyway, so the user would obviously need to consent to each of these.

Look, I agree that this shouldn't be necessary in the first place. And the EFF is right to raise the concern that ZKP has to be done right if it's going to be done at all. But I'm disappointed that this is resulting in misinformation about ZKPs.