The planned #chatcontrol makes the world less secure and more authoritarian, as it is directed against private and encrypted communication. Proponents are using disinformation, lies, and sleight of hand to push through the project. But chat control can still be stopped. A commentary.
🇬🇧 It's up to all of us now. Write a mail to you government. Share the call to action. Call your government during the day. Together we are the resistance. Stop #ChatControl!
Basically, they want to scan everyone's chat messages for illegal stuff, which is completely disproportionate and a #privacy nightmare.
Chat Control violates fundamental rights (according to the European Data Protection Board), and the German Child Protection Association says it's not suitable to combat child abuse.
Please tell your government to vote against it! I already have.
It was nearly two years ago that I wrote this article1 about the EU #ChatControl surveillance directive on behalf of the @cryptpad team.
Very little has changed since then. Experts in technology, law, and policy all agree that the proposal undermines basic European rights, that it will be abused by authoritarian member states, and that the proposed tech solutions cannot possibly do the job the supporting legislators have claimed.
Nevertheless, they have persisted, claiming the support of "expert testimony" that overwhelmingly consists of unsupported claims by lobbyists associated with law enforcement and defense contractors who stand to benefit financially from its implementation.
A vote is expected to take place on June 19th. These have been scheduled and delayed multiple times already, but this it feels like they might get away with it. There is a lot going on in the EU at the moment, and people are both distracted and tired from fighting this for so long.
I'll try to make resistance easier by collecting some suggested actions below, with links.