The EU Council has presented a new revised proposal on CSAM scanning in chats, known as “Chat Control,” which received broad support from lawmakers at a November 5 meeting, with no votes against and no need for additional changes. This version removes the obligation to scan all links, images, and videos shared on messaging services, making scanning voluntary for providers. Patrick Breyer, a digital rights lawyer, warns that a “risk mitigation measure” in Article 4 could force high-risk services to implement mandatory scanning, overriding the voluntary nature and potentially breaking the encryption of private communications (such as in Signal or WhatsApp). In addition, the new version extends monitoring to private chat texts and metadata, going beyond the previous proposal.
