By ByteBot
On November 26, EU ambassadors approved Chat Control in a close split vote. Despite headlines celebrating a “privacy win,” privacy experts warn it’s the most dangerous version yet. The proposal removes mandatory scanning but replaces it with what advocates call a “toxic legal framework” that incentivizes platforms to scan private messages voluntarily while mandatory age verification eliminates online anonymity entirely.
The “Voluntary” Scanning Deception
Here’s the reality behind “voluntary”: Article 4’s risk mitigation clause creates a coercive framework where platforms must scan to avoid being classified as non-compliant. Encrypted platforms automatically get flagged as “high risk,” which triggers mandatory mitigation measures—and “voluntary scanning” is explicitly listed as an acceptable mitigation option. Don’t scan? You’re non-compliant.
MEP Patrick Breyer nailed it in his analysis: “Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized.” The Danish proposal removes legal compulsion but replaces it with regulatory pressure that achieves the same outcome. Meta and Google can now scan “all private chats indiscriminately without court orders,” according to Breyer. Moreover, Germany’s Federal Police already warned that 50% of reports under the current voluntary scheme are “criminally irrelevant.”
The False Positive Crisis Nobody’s Talking About
Germany’s 2024 BKA report exposes a fatal flaw: 48.3% false positive rate. Out of 205,728 reports, 99,375 flagged innocent people—nearly 100,000 false accusations annually, and that’s only scanning unencrypted, voluntary platforms. Ireland sees similar failure: only 20.3% of reports turn out to be actual CSAM. Switzerland reports error rates as high as 80%.
Scale this to encrypted messaging and the numbers become catastrophic. Over 500 cryptographers signed an open letter warning that “state-of-art detectors would yield unacceptably high false positive and false negative rates.” Even with a hypothetical 0.1% error rate—far better than any existing system—WhatsApp’s 140 billion daily messages would generate 1.4 million false positives every single day.
For businesses, false positives mean trade secrets, source code, and strategic plans could be flagged and sent to authorities without warning. For families, it means investigations opened over vacation photos or medical images. The technology doesn’t work, and deploying it at EU scale will bury law enforcement in false leads while destroying innocent lives.
Age Verification: The End of Anonymous Communication
The proposal requires platforms to “reliably identify minors,” which translates to mandatory ID uploads or biometric face scans for every user accessing email, messaging apps, or social media. The EU Commission already published its Age Verification Blueprint v2.0 in October 2025, with Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, and Spain piloting the system.
Over 400 scientists warned that “age assessment cannot be performed in a privacy-preserving way with current technology.” They’re right. This isn’t about protecting children—it’s about eliminating online anonymity for everyone. Consequently, whistleblowers lose the ability to report corruption anonymously. Journalists can’t protect sources. Activists face surveillance risk. Abuse victims can’t seek help without creating an identity trail.
And teenagers? Users under 17 get banned from WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and online games with chat functions. Patrick Breyer calls it “Digital House Arrest,” and it’s hard to argue. Protection by exclusion isn’t protection—it’s pedagogical failure dressed up as policy.
Signal Threatens EU Exit
Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker has been clear: the company will not comply and would “effectively pull out of EU countries” if Chat Control passes in its current form. She’s not alone—over 500 cryptography experts have declared the proposal “technically infeasible,” warning it creates “unprecedented capabilities for surveillance, control, and censorship.”
Apple tried this in 2021. The company proposed client-side CSAM scanning, faced immediate backlash from 90+ advocacy groups and dozens of cybersecurity experts, and quietly abandoned the plan by December. Even Apple, with infinite resources and PR firepower, couldn’t implement client-side scanning without destroying end-to-end encryption. The EU thinks it can do better? Unlikely.
If Signal exits and WhatsApp compromises encryption to comply, 450 million EU citizens lose access to secure communications. Furthermore, developers building privacy-focused tools face a choice: comply with surveillance mandates or relocate outside the EU. This isn’t speculation—it’s the logical outcome of forcing platforms to scan encrypted messages.
What Happens Next
The November 26 approval creates a negotiating mandate for trilogue talks between the EU Council and European Parliament. The deadline? April 2026, when current voluntary scanning provisions expire. Patrick Breyer calls this timeline a manufactured crisis, noting that Denmark’s claim that Parliament would refuse to extend scanning was “a blatant lie designed to create urgency.”
The European Parliament adopted a position in November 2023 explicitly opposing indiscriminate scanning without suspicion. They support targeted investigations with judicial oversight—the traditional law enforcement approach that actually works. However, Parliament historically compromises on surveillance during negotiations, and the April 2026 deadline creates artificial pressure.
There’s another detail worth noting: EU officials, police, military, and intelligence services are exempt from the scanning regime. A two-tier system where those who write the laws exempt themselves undermines any claim this is about safety rather than control.
Key Takeaways
- “Voluntary” scanning is coerced through Article 4 risk mitigation requirements—encrypted platforms must scan or face non-compliance penalties
- Germany’s 48.3% false positive rate proves the technology doesn’t work; scaling to 450M users would generate millions of false accusations
- Mandatory age verification eliminates anonymity for whistleblowers, journalists, activists, and abuse victims while banning teenagers from digital social life
- Signal threatens EU exit rather than compromise encryption; Apple tried similar scanning in 2021 and abandoned it after expert backlash
- European Parliament can still stop this in trilogue negotiations before the April 2026 deadline—but the manufactured “crisis” creates pressure to compromise
