Privacy alert
Today I’m just asking you to go to fightchatcontrol.eu and let your undecided MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) know that you oppose scanning of your private messages and photos.
At the very least, let the EP Trilogue Shadows know you’re against it (If you are, of course, but anyone sane should be).
If you haven’t been following the news, Chat Control is a EU law that’s being negotiated (again) today that would force platforms to scan everyone’s private messages, photos, and videos in order to find child abuse materials.
It may be well-meaning but it amounts to mass surveillance of all of us without suspicion.
It would break end-to-end encryption, making all communication less secure, produce loads of false positives (like flagging innocent family pictures), inundate already overwhelmed services with these false alarms and, as always, can be easily evaded by actual criminals.
And, as with many of these laws, it can start as one thing and turn into another. Once the data is being collected, it doesn’t take much to start using it for other purposes. Imagine what happens to all that data if there’s a major political change (see: Trump).
The law has been repeatedly pushed back but it’s being presented again via a procedural loophole, despite most MEPs voting against it.
They’ll keep trying until we stop paying attention – we can’t.
Colin