Not even a month passed and Chat Control is back in the EU (reclaimthenet.org)

The European Commission’s revised “Chat Control 2.0” draft is resurfacing a contentious plan to make messaging providers take “all appropriate risk mitigation measures,” a phrasing critics say would allow compulsory scanning of private communications despite earlier pushback. Dr. Patrick Breyer warns the text effectively reintroduces mandatory monitoring — including potential client-side scanning — and expands beyond optional photo/video checks to allow text and metadata analysis. The proposal could be adopted quietly by member-state negotiators and includes new age-verification requirements that would likely demand IDs or biometrics, undermining anonymous access. For the AI/ML community this is consequential: the draft explicitly enables deployment of algorithms and AI to flag “suspicious” content, creating pressure to build and ship automated classifiers into messaging stacks or onto users’ devices. That raises technical and ethical issues — E2EE’s protection could be circumvented, client-side models risk leaking sensitive data, and automated systems are prone to context-blind false positives (German police already report ~50% irrelevant flags). Broader implications include legal and design pressures on model developers, dataset access and auditability concerns, and threats to whistleblowing and free expression. Breyer urges blocking the regulation or adding strict limits: prohibit mandated scanning, ban AI-driven text monitoring, require judicial oversight for targeted probes, and preserve anonymous communication.