The EU's Surveillance Bill Is Down. Not Out.

The European project to surveil private messaging has been rejected by the European Parliament. A hollow victory: the permanent version of the text is in its final stretch.

We thought everything had been said about ChatControl — the CSAM regulation (Child Sexual Abuse Material). How, under the guise of combating online child predation, the proposal would mandate the scanning of all communications before encryption, throwing open the door to constant mass surveillance of every European citizen.

How a supposedly temporary measure keeps playing extra time, reinventing itself version after version — all while critical elections loom on the horizon: Hungary, Germany, and France, each a potential turning point for the future of the European Union. That this obsession with censorship and speech control happens to coincide with those votes is, of course, purely coincidental.

The regulation stands a strong chance of shattering against the wall of European law — unless, of course, the real agenda is to quietly dismantle that wall.

A new chapter in the saga: on March 26th, the European Parliament voted against yet another extension of the temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive.

The ePrivacy Directive is the cornerstone of European legislation protecting privacy in electronic communications. It complements the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with more specific rules covering emails, texts, phone calls, and online messaging. In short, it is the primary bulwark against the violation of correspondence secrecy — which is nothing less than a fundamental right, as enshrined in Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Put plainly: the ePrivacy Directive makes the automated, blanket scanning of private messages by platforms flatly illegal. As does all jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU, which explicitly prohibits mass surveillance.

Which is precisely why the battle to carve out exemptions has been so relentless. Which is precisely why ChatControl exists.