The EU is destroying the decentralization that once made Europe the global apex of freedom, equality and prosperity, and turning Europe into a bloated, schlerotic and authoritarian bureaucracy like the Chinese and Ottoman empires that it once defeated.
Robert Metsola met Ashton Kutcher (co-founder of Thorn, which develops message scanning tech) in March 2023 and posted a photo on Instagram. Kutcher lobbied MEPs hard in favour of strong detection measures.
We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely. Age verification. Chat control. To an extent also the digital euro. It all seems hopeless, they're pushing this through despite what semblance of a democratic process we have clearly being against it.
[that is not to speak of how undemocratic the european system is and how badly it needs reform. Von der leyen should never have been able to get the role she holds]
Original title: President vs Parliament: Metsola overrides MEPs in bid to force through child abuse law
Content from TFA:
> Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM
> The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution.
> Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo.
> If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note.
> Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”
National politicians use the EU to bypass national democracy and then blame the EU publicly to deflect of their true involvement.
Uk was a leading EU country via being one of the largest financial contributors, and UK was behind many of the decisions they later blamed on 'EU Bureaucrats'.
To clarify for fellow readers, since this is a messy situation:
This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless.
This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success.
As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way:
- Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1].
- Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2].
So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse.
I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead..
The title is incorrect and editorialised, Metsola is the president of the parliament, not the commission.
A conservative from a highly Catholic country (Malta), pushing conservative/far right values. Not surprising but still disappointing, that's what happens when the populace thinks voting far right is a "protest vote" and the election hands them 1/3 of the assembly.
It's just sad what happens in the world. It's awful. But most likely it's one of the "zombie" projects. That will never be removed until they are passed
This is a push by one individual, or maybe a small group. I don't think we should generalize this to the whole European commission, or the whole EU.
Hopefully and most likely it will be shut down if put up for a vote.
17 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] threadRobert Metsola met Ashton Kutcher (co-founder of Thorn, which develops message scanning tech) in March 2023 and posted a photo on Instagram. Kutcher lobbied MEPs hard in favour of strong detection measures.
Content from TFA:
> Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM
> The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution.
> Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo.
> If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note.
> Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”
National politicians use the EU to bypass national democracy and then blame the EU publicly to deflect of their true involvement.
Uk was a leading EU country via being one of the largest financial contributors, and UK was behind many of the decisions they later blamed on 'EU Bureaucrats'.
This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless.
This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success.
As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way:
- Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1].
- Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2].
So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse.
I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead..
[1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security...
[2] Page 18, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
A conservative from a highly Catholic country (Malta), pushing conservative/far right values. Not surprising but still disappointing, that's what happens when the populace thinks voting far right is a "protest vote" and the election hands them 1/3 of the assembly.