- Chat Control proposal still represents a risk, warns group of academics
- The open letter comes as the EU Council meets.
- The bill could be adopted as early as December 8, 2025.
Chat monitoring legislation “still carries major risks for society without clear benefits for children,” according to an open letter recently published by a group of European academics.
After once again failing to obtain the required majority, Denmark has withdrawn the mandatory scanning clause included in the original chat control bill, making it voluntary.
The measure was initially hailed as a victory by privacy and security experts, but was short-lived with people warning that the text could still introduce mandatory scanning.through the back door.”
A group of 18 leading European cybersecurity and privacy academics have reiterated these concerns in an open letter published this week.
The letter was addressed to the European Council two days before the November 19 meeting with the Committee of Permanent Representatives, whose adoption is expected on December 8, 2025.
Expansion of scope worries privacy advocates
Originally, only URLs, images and videos were going to be the target of CSAM analysis. Now, however, lawmakers have expanded the scope of the bill to also include text, in a move that echoes previous versions of the bill.
In their open letter, the academics warn that expanding the scope of the legislation will have unintended consequences. In particular, they argue that “expanding the scope of detection only opens the door to monitoring and examining more of the conversations, without any guarantee of better protection.”
They also highlight the potential for false positives, writing: “Current AI technology is far from accurate enough to carry out these tasks with guarantees of the necessary level of accuracy.”
About mandatory age verification
The new proposal would also lead to Age verification is being introduced in app stores and encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp. According to experts, this not only fails to serve the bill’s primary purpose, but also exposes everyone to new privacy and security risks.
“Age assessment cannot be performed in a privacy-preserving manner with current technology due to reliance on biometric, behavioral, or contextual information,” they argue. “In fact, it incentivizes the collection and exploitation of (children’s) data.”
Experts warn that even adopting an alternative approach – such as using official documents to verify age – would cut off a “substantial fraction of the population” from essential online services.
What’s more, these provisions would be easy to circumvent. “They can be easily circumvented by using non-EU providers or VPNs to bypass geolocation controls,” the experts note.
Voluntary screening still carries risks
It appears that changing CSAM scanning from mandatory to voluntary has been enough to achieve bipartisan agreements among lawmakers and end more than three years of failed negotiations.
But many crypto experts and data scientists are still convinced that even voluntary detection will harm security and privacy, particularly due to the belief that the technology is currently not accurate or effective enough.
Ultimately, “on-device sensing technologies cannot be considered a reasonable tool to mitigate risks, as there is no proven benefit, while the potential for harm and abuse is enormous,” they conclude.
🇪🇺 EU governments are removing #ChatControl from today’s COREPER agenda because a majority has not yet been reached. For the reasons, see this leaked cable, especially on the demand from Spain: pic.twitter.com/poNH2hH8KVNovember 19, 2025
The open letter appears to have already influenced today’s meeting.
As a leaked cable shared by former German Pirate Party MEP and digital rights jurist Patrick Breyer shows, EU governments are removing Chat Control from today’s COREPER agenda because a majority has not yet been reached.
This could seriously delay the adoption of the new rules, scheduled for December 8, 2025.
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