PU 14: Chat Control is Back

This is Punching Upwards, episode 14, for the 14th of December, 2025. Chat Control is back. Broadcasting from Düsseldorf here in Western Germany and watching the days march on rapidly towards the end of the year, my name is Fab. Welcome to Punching Upwards.

In episode 6 of this podcast I talked about the EU’s chat control legislation, why it is a very bad idea, and how Germany stopped the vote on it from going ahead almost at the last minute. Since it seemed uncertain what would happen if Germany’s government changed its mind, or faltered in its opposition, I resolved to keep an eye on where this legislation was going. And well, it didn’t take long. And now chat control is back.

But before I start talking about that, a quick heads up. This podcast is part of my No AI Content initiative. If you want to know more about that, including why I’m doing it, visit fab.industries and click on the owl. In short, this podcast is produced without the help of AI. I don’t use AI tools when I research the topics for episodes, prepare my notes for the show, or in other parts of the production and recording.

And now back to chat control. It might be useful if you listen to episode 6, that one was titled Chat Control Denied, if you haven’t done so already. It explains what this law is and goes into the huge downsides that come with its idea of fighting child sexual abuse material by scanning all the digital communications of every EU citizen. including why that would make encryption of any kind completely useless. I don’t want to explain all of this again at this point, since the episode came out only a few months ago in October. You can get that episode along with all the other ones by going to fab.industries/podcast and scrolling down to the episode list.

So after Germany stopped the vote on chat control, most media outlets, if they reported on it at all, reported this as a win for privacy. In my initial episode, I was cautiously optimistic, but remained skeptical, of course, taking the stance that we would have to continue to watch out for this issue to rear its ugly head again. And as it turns out, I wasn’t wrong.

Here’s a report from Euronews from the 27th of November: EU member states agreed on Wednesday on a common position concerning the controversial child sexual abuse protection law, known as the CSA regulation. The measures aim to systematically remove illegal and harmful content by creating a new EU centre on child sexual abuse, empowering authorities to oblige companies to block or remove such material. Following years of deadlock, the Danish presidency secured a compromise that removes mandatory scanning of private end-to-end encrypted communications by authorities. However, platforms like Facebook, Messenger or Instagram would still be allowed to voluntarily scan messages themselves. Critics remain concerned, with former pirate MEP Patrick Breyer calling the deal a Trojan horse that legitimizes voluntary mass surveillance by US corporations. There are also fears that the proposed age verification system using ID cards or facial recognition could endanger online privacy. Negotiations between the European Parliament, Commission and Council are now set to begin in 2026.

This actually wasn’t such a bad report, considering, I mean, there was precious little reporting about this in the legacy media at all. And this report at least went into both sides of the issue and still mentioned that there is still a problem, which I don’t think I’ve found any other report that, you know, mainstream at least, that was talking about that. Obviously, there’s lots of geek kind of nerds tech media that talked about this. But even some of those reports got it wrong and were like, okay, this is a win.

And, you know, after the Germans, you know, what I also reported after the German government basically shut this down and then they said, okay, we’re going to not put this to a vote. Most of the, even some tech media thought, okay, and wrote about this and said, you know, this is, This is now done and we don’t need to worry about this anymore. But it seems that it isn’t. It seems that what the EU Council did was simply switch to plan B, which is privatize the whole thing. If they weren’t allowed to have the police and intelligence services spy on citizens, they were now going to use private companies to do it.

It is a very similar system to what we discussed in episode 12 of the show when I talked about the liber-net report on the censorship industrial complex here in Germany. And as we have heard in this Euronews report, they quoted Patrick Breyer, who is a member of the German Pirate Party and used to be MEP, a member of parliament, European member of parliament until 2024 when he didn’t put forth his candidacy anymore, but his website is very active and he’s still reporting on the chat control issue. I think he’s actually the person who coined the term chat control, which obviously the EU doesn’t like. And that’s why lots of legacy media doesn’t use it. I think it’s a very apt term. I think the EU lawmakers think it’s derogatory but I actually think it’s very apt. That’s why I use it. It’s very spot on. You know chat control is exactly what these people want and as you know they say it’s to prevent you know the spread of child sexual abuse materials and I went into that in the other episode but you know as Andrew Lowenthal also said in the interview when he talked about the liber-net report, what this kind of behavior from the state does, it chills speech. So it is a form of content control. So I think the term chat control is actually quite apt.

And because Patrick Breyer has been doing such good reporting on this, I want to actually quote from what he wrote about this vote, you know, after this initial news came out that chat control might be dead. So on the 26th of November, Patrick Breyer wrote this on his website: Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has, quote, backed away from chat control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a closed split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer warns journalists and the public not to be deceived by the label, quote, 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.

Quote, the headlines are misleading. Chat control is not dead. It is just being privatized. What the council endorsed today is a Trojan horse. By cementing, quote, 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.

And before I go on with this, a few comments here. This is obviously the tactic that has now become very popular that we’ve seen in the Twitter Files and that we’ve seen in this censorship industrial complex when the state wants to do something and gets accused of, you know, or in this case, breaching citizens’ privacy, a way to get around this is by not doing it themselves, not having the police or intelligence services do this, but by basically forcing the platforms that most of our daily digital life runs on Facebook, Meta, WhatsApp, Google, all these different platforms, Instagram, all of this, by forcing those providers, to do it for them. And this is why, you know, they, they might say, this is what, what Breyer means. I think, um, they say voluntary, but it isn’t really voluntary. Um, as we, we’ve seen, uh, the, uh, EU under the Digital Services Act, uh, fine, um, just recently fine Elon Musk’s Twitter or X, a huge amount of money for not doing certain kinds of content controls. Uh, this is how it goes. It sounds voluntary, but in the end, what happens is the EU will set up kind of a structure, organizations, maybe even NGOs that then pressure these companies and they will create laws that make it possible for people to sue these companies, which is why this isn’t really voluntary. It’s like saying the social media censorship that Musk’s Twitter didn’t want to go through is voluntary. I mean, it might be voluntary under this law, but you will then get sued under other laws. So it really isn’t.

And the other part of this is something that I’ve been also looking at for a while the push, not only in Europe, but also in America. We had laws like this passed in Texas, for example, where lawmakers were I don’t know what they really want to do. I don’t know if it’s a guise, but basically they’re saying they want to protect minors and they want aid verification on the internet, which will force. And I feel like because this has been going on, there’s been lots of news stories about this and I’m also kind of disappointed with the coverage of this in the legacy media. So I will probably do an episode about this in the future. The fact that if you want to do that, if you require age verification, you basically get rid of all anonymity on the internet. So you will have to, even people who are grownups, adults, will have to basically prove that they’re not children, which means they will have to prove their identity, which basically means you tie your identity to your internet use, which is like, oh, you want to visit this porn site. It might be a free porn site, which right now you can do if you’re not paying for anything. You’re not leaving a paper trail with a credit card company or whatever, okay your ISP knows what sites you visit normally, I mean there are ways to get around that you could use a VPN there are other ways around that but somebody will usually know; the VPN provider will know. And if we do this, and even if you tie in a government system, then the government will know what porn sites you visit. Because even if you’re not paying for anything, it’s just a free site on the internet, because you have to age verify to protect the children, which is always the kind of cry that is used if you want to justify any of this but the end result is massive control.

Aand Breyer goes into that as well so I’ll continue to quote from what he wrote here: The Council’s mandate stands in sharp contrast to the European Parliament’s position, which demands that surveillance be targeted only at suspects and age checks are to remain voluntary. The Council’s approach introduces three critical threats that have largely gone unreported.

And I agree with Breyer on this, which is why, you know … I mean, he’s a politician from a party. He has a clear agenda. But, you know, I think he’s doing good reporting on this. And I actually think I agree with his agenda in this case, which is why I’m giving him airtime here.

So, the council’s approach introduces three critical threats that have largely gone unreported. First, the text aims to make temporary chat control 1.0, in air quotes, regulation. This allows providers like Meta or Google to scan all private chats indiscriminately and without a court order. Second, to comply with the council’s requirement to, quote, reliably identify minors, providers will be forced to verify the age of every single user. Three, under the guise of protection, the council text proposes burying users under 17 from using apps with chat functions, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and popular online games unless stringent conditions are met.

And interrupting here once again from quoting this, this is number one. Obviously, that’s the crux of the matter. So they’re saying it’s voluntary, but it really isn’t. And the thing is, what they’re doing is they explicitly are allowing these companies to scan all the private chats, which right now they actually wouldn’t be allowed to do, especially if it’s end-to-end encryption. The same protection that protects, like, you know … That makes it illegal to, like, hack systems to breach, you know, we talked about that. I talked about that in the Modern Solution episode. That makes it illegal in the EU to break into computer systems and into secure connections actually protects your end-to-end encrypted chat from even the provider like Meta, like WhatsApp. Let’s say, you use WhatsApp, even if it’s on their system it’s end-to-end encrypted and they’re not, even if they could, they wouldn’t be allowed to break that, that would actually be illegal. Which this is kind of turning on its head. And then obviously the age verification. And then the third point, barring users under 17 from using any chat functions, that’s just mad.

I mean, as Breyer points out, this is where these kids’ social lives are at. And under 17, so in Germany, I mean, you would actually here under certain conditions, you can now get a driver’s license for a car. Like I used to get a driver’s license when I was a kid. I was 16. I got a driver’s license for a little scooter, like a motorized scooter. But now you can actually under certain conditions get driver’s license for a car. So you’d be able to drive a car before you’d be allowed to chat on the internet. That’s just crazy. And as he points out, WhatsApp and Instagram is one thing. This is what people think of and parents maybe think of, oh, if we do this, then our kids won’t be on Instagram. Okay, but we’re talking games, like all popular online games, which is where lots of social interaction happens for kids these days. They can’t use any of that, so they can’t play Minecraft. They can’t play Fortnite. They can’t play any of these games. That is just crazy.

That just tells you that will be a revolt. I think kids will just … And they’re allowed to vote, by the way. There are lots of elections in Europe where you can vote when you’re 16. So … They will be not, I mean, that will be a backlash if that goes through. I think that’s just crazy. I mean, you should even think about that. If you’re a politician and you have an idea like that, that just tells everybody else how far away you are from just real life and what is actually happening out there and what kids are actually doing. And obviously the EU is not the only one. I think Australia, I think that law went into effect. I think Australia banned, all minors, I think under 18, from attending, from visiting social media sites. So it’s not only the EU that is doing this kind of stuff.

Anyway, continuing here with what Breyer is saying: Today’s vote was far from unanimous. With the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland voting against and Italy abstaining, reflecting deep concerns within the EU about the legality and proportionality of the matter.

I think the proportionality is a huge key here. I think what they’re doing is not proportional to what they’re trying to achieve. Negotiations, in air quotes, trilogues, between the Council and the European Parliament will soon begin with the aim of finalizing the text before April 2026. And they’re actually happening right now as this episode is being released. I’ve actually recorded this a little bit earlier, but this is actually being discussed right now.

So what is a trilogue? I thought I would clarify that because obviously not the EU is very complicated and lots of people who listen to this might not know what the trilogue is so quoting the EU here from their own website where they explain like EU law. And this is, settle down and grab yourself a coffee because we’re now going deep into legalese and EU bureaucrat speech, so quoting the EU: In the context of the European Union’s ordinary legislative procedure, a trilogue is an informal inter-institutional negotiation bringing together representatives of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. The aim of a trilogue is to reach a provisional agreement on a legislative proposal that is acceptable to both the Parliament and the Council, the co-legislators.

So the Parliament and the Council are the two co-legislators.

This provisional agreement must then be adopted by each of those institutions’ formal procedures. A trilogue may be held at any stage of the legislative procedure with the aim of resolving outstanding issues and is chaired by the co-legislator hosting the meeting. The Commission’s role is to mediate between the parties. Informal trilogue meetings should not be confused with conciliation committee meetings, which are a formal step of the ordinary legislative procedure after the second reading. In both cases, all three above-mentioned institutions are represented and the goal is to agree on a provisional agreement or a joint text respectively.

Gotta love bureaucracy. Nobody does this better than the EU. So the point is, you know, there’s the, there’s the part, the EU parliament, which has, you know, when you vote in Europe in a European election, you send local representatives from parties to the European parliament. They then get together in these groups of parties. So there’s like a green group and a conservative, whatever is social democrats. And those make up the EU parliament. And then obviously, uh, that is like one part of the lawmaking process. And then there is also the council, which is made up out of representatives sent by the governments of each of the countries. So, you know, Germany sends people, France sends people, every country sends people to this council, but that is the, so this might actually be different, you know, depending on how people vote, you know, a certain party or certain group of parties might be in power, might run the government of a country and send their representatives to the council, but the actual parliamentary party that comes from this country might be quite different because the government of the countries are based on the local elections, whereas the European members of parliament that are sent to the parliament are based on their own European election. And those turn out sometimes quite differently than the local elections.

Yeah. So you have these two bodies and then there is the commission, which is, you know, headed by Ursula von der Leyen right now. So she’s the president. And so the role of the commission is to mediate between the council and the parliament. This is all obviously very complicated. But in this case, obviously the parliament wants stuff to be more like it was, more conservative, kind of just, you know, just basically the police and state going after people that have committed crimes and have a judge sign off on that and it’s a parliament position and then the council obviously wants this chat control where they just want to scan all communications encrypted or not any communication of any citizen in the EU just to throw that in a big AI system and try to figure out who’s doing bad stuff. And now, obviously, it will then be the job of the commission to mediate between those two positions.

So that was how it looked like it was going to go. But then at the start of December, there was actually something happening, something unexpected happening. It looks like the commission is now actually siding with the parliament, basically recognizing the massive misgivings in civil society all throughout the EU. And now there actually seems to be some movement away from this totalitarian scan everything position that the council has towards the more moderate, more conservative, let’s actually look at stuff from criminals attitude of the parliament.

And on the 4th of December, Patrick Bayer posted this new report and quoting from that: Just days before the start of the decisive trilogue negotiations on the controversial regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse, CSAM, known by critics as chat control, the political tide in Brussels has turned. During a hearing in the Civil Liberties Committee, LIBE, today, the new EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Magnus Brunner, surprised MEPs by stating his preference for the European Parliament’s negotiating mandate over the draft law adopted by EU governments, i.e. the Council. This statement provides massive backing for the parliament’s chief negotiator, Javier Zarzalejos from EPP, who has united an unusually broad coalition ranging from the left to the right behind his position. And this has probably something to do with, you know, why the tide’s turning. While EU member state governments continue to push for mass scanning of private messages at the discretion of providers, mandatory age verification for all users and effective bans on communication apps for under-17s, the Parliament enters negotiations with a clear alternative model — mandatory but targeted surveillance only where reasonable suspicion exists and with a judicial warrant — alongside a firm rejection of mandatory age checks and app lockouts for teenagers. Javier Zarzalejos, I’m probably pronouncing this wrong, chair of the LIBE committee and rapporteur, emphasized during the meeting that the parliament is entering negotiations with a, quote, strong mandate that is, quote, supported by all political groups.

And this is obviously interesting. And I think … And I want to comment on two things here. First, it is interesting that now the position of people who are for digital freedom, and I don’t know how I feel about this, but the position of people who are … want to protect privacy and digital freedom is basically, let’s go back to the model that we had, which was intrusive, but basically a judge had to sign off. And then there was legal spying by the police and by intelligence services who could even put trojans on your phone, which is what this amounts to, either use a backdoor or put a trojan on your device. And that is now the accepted position.

Whereas before, people who were critical of all of this were saying even that was going to fine. I’m still of that opinion. I still think the police shouldn’t be doing this and shouldn’t be allowed to do this. And I think especially … even if we accept that they’re allowed to do this, if you look at, especially in Germany, in what kind of cases this was used and how easily it was, it was the police and, and, you know, I mean, we’re talking about the police. I think the intelligence services just do this without anybody knowing, but like for the police and, and prosecutors to get a warrant that, I personally think that was way too easy.

So I actually think even this fallback position, this common sense position, as Breyer kind of advertises it, for me, even goes a step too far. But I guess we’ve all kind of accepted this now because I’ve come up with something so much worse that we’re almost happy to go back to that, which is a bit, I find unfortunate, but it is what it is.

Continuing here with Breyer’s report: While Commissioner Brunner rejected the term chat control, he sent a clear political signal. He offered to extend the current interim regulation, also known as derogation, which expires in April 2026, which is, I guess, why they have to decide it until then. To remove time pressure from the negotiations and allow for a careful agreement. This open admission that he prefers the parliament’s position, Zarzalejos’s report, over that of the council is an unusual departure from the commission’s standard support for EU governments. While the Parliament stands united, the Council’s mandate is built on shaky ground.

The negotiation position of the member states was adopted without the support of key countries, including Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic and Estonia, reflecting deep divisions among governments regarding the legality and proportionality of the measures. The trilogue negotiations are set to begin shortly. Thanks to the unified stance of the parliament under Zarzalejos, chances have significantly improved that indiscriminate mass surveillance and the end of anonymous communication can be prevented.

So maybe, maybe there’s still some hope here. You know, maybe sanity prevails and we can go back to what was before, you know, a Europe where citizens can talk to each other and privacy and the police doesn’t, you know, the police doesn’t spy on them, but does the actual job, you know, going after criminals instead of suspecting every single citizen off the bat and spending their time snooping around data that they have no business looking at. And I kind of, as I said, I think even if we go back to that, I think even that model, personally, I think would need to be rolled back. Even if we stay with the, okay, it is legal for the police in certain cases to use, I guess, backdoors or trojan your device. I think the police should never be able to do this.

I remember the 80s, the 70s and 80s in Germany and the fight about putting, you know, tapping people’s phones. And I think if the police can’t do their job, without spying on smartphones, then they can’t do their job. They have many other ways. And we have to remember that there are many, many other ways to catch criminals. I mean, one big thing is metadata analysis. If you get the metadata from providers, and we’ve known this for decades. So if you have end-to-end encrypted communications and the provider can’t give you the contents of the messages, the context. So who sent what message to whom? Where were they at the time? How long did they write? Like all this kind of stuff on the phone. Like how long did they talk? Yeah. This is a wealth of information that allows you to map, you know, a lot of stuff and find out a lot of things, especially with kind of big data and I guess AI analysis, as you would call it today, that, you know, just gets easier and easier. You will not be able to use the messages as proof of the crime, but I mean, you should be able to you know, have other ways to do that. And police always had other ways.

I always find it funny that the police always goes our job is so hard. And basically if you look at, I’m just as a, as a hobby and because I’m a writer and I, dabble in writing novels. For example, I find murder investigations quite interesting, and I’ve researched murder investigations. And if you listen to two crime podcasts, you basically have the same kind of knowledge. If you compare the work homicide investigators had to do like in the 70s or in the 60s to find a serial killer and how easy it is compared to that today and basically everything got easier because you know people have smartphones and the cameras everywhere. And they continue to always complain and they always want more possibilities to, you know, the laws change so they can spy on people and they want more information. It’s like, dudes, your jobs have gotten exponentially easier since back in the day. Like, what else do you want? They always … they make it sound like their jobs get harder and harder, whereas they get easier and easier all the time.

So yeah, maybe I’m more critical, but at least, you know, this seems to be moving in the right direction. But somehow I feel with all the prudish and totalitarian attitudes that are prevailing these days, this topic will come back on the docket one way or the other, sooner or later. And of course, I keep an eye on it. I mean, the negotiations are going on, so I will … it’s a pretty sure thing that in the future I will do an episode just to explain what finally ends up being the law and then dissecting that and seeing what’s going on there. Yeah, not a nice topic, but I guess it’s very important for us to know about this and not only for us who live in the EU. I think if you in the UK or even in the US, Europe seems to be on the front line of this battleground. We seem to be the worst with these kind of laws as far as democratic societies are concerned. We seem to be the most draconian with these matters. So I think it’s important to keep an eye on it.

Anyway, I’m doing that. And thanks to Michael Mullan-Jensen and Fadi Mansour and Evgeny Kuznetsov, who subscribed on Substack and supporting the show financially and are enabling me to do this. Also, thanks to Sir Galteran, who continues to provide financial backing via Fountain.fm. If you want to join these good people in making sure that I can keep making these episodes, head to fab.industries/podcast. This page not only tells you how to get the show via various podcast apps, but it also explains this Substack subscription. That way you’ll get an optional email when a new episode is released and you can support the show with a subscription of 5 euros a month or 60 euros a year plus tax or your local equivalent currency in case you’re not in the EU or the Eurozone.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Punching Upwards. The theme music for the podcast is a track called Fight or Fall by Dev Lev, which I use under license. I will be back with more detailed coverage of interesting news stories that you won’t get from the corporate news media or angles that you don’t get there next Sunday. Until then, goodbye, and I wish you good luck.

This has been Punching Upwards, a podcast by FAB INDUSTRIES. New media. New rules.