We call on citizens in Europe to stand up for their right to privacy, and reject any further of the implementation of Chat Control regulation
It is no secret that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to create kill lists for Gaza, replacing targeted military interventions with a huge toll on human lives. The use of AI is expanding everywhere, increasing the need for massive data collection to feed AI. What better way is there to satisfy the massive demand than to place civilians under mass-surveillance? Feeding it with keywords, phrases and biometric data, and use it to detect undesirable behaviours, thoughts and political opinions, especially when they are unfavourable to the present Israeli and western political regimes.
In the context of Gaza, Israelis have invented the most sophisticated spywares in the world, e.g. everyone has heard of NSO Pegasus after several politicians’ and journalists’ devices were infected with it. It was no surprise how the Israelis received data for AI to come up with error prone target lists that have resulted to tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians getting assassinated in the past 12 months. The horrendous death toll in Gaza is a result of prior surveillance, collection of biometric data of people and the executor is AI, deciding how many Palestinians die every day.
In Brussels, the EU Commission has launched several new proposals in the past years, that can be used to place Europe under total control of Brussels, e.g., eID’s, eWallet, EHDS, eCash, all of them collecting tonnes of sensitive data of individuals similar to the information Israel has on Palestinians and uses to repress, discriminate and murder. In Europe, the planned intelligence gathering tool is called ‘Chat Control’, hacking into people’s devices and collecting data from more than 450 million citizens’ devices. We would be fools to think that our non-democratic leaders today, or the future uprising fascists, wouldn’t use our data for repression and discrimination. The recent call for AI factories in Europe by the EU Commission sets a dangerous precedent for the future of Europe. In Israel, AI factories are used to turn civilian sites into military targets.
Background on EU’s Chat Control drafting processes, failed transparency and Cronyism
In 2020, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johannsson, under Ursula von der Leyen’s presidency, started to draft a regulation to remove child sexual abuse material from online platforms. As such, no one is opposing removing horrendous images of child abuse, especially when it hurts the victim, but the fact remains: Chat Control does nothing to stop the abuse from happening! The regulation has been drafted behind closed doors and without consultation with European civil society or privacy experts. Instead, the EU Commission has worked closely with Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher, as revealed by Balkan Insight in September 2023, who financially will benefit from Chat Control, should the regulation be passed. A few days later, in another article, it was revealed that Europol sought unlimited data access to online Chat Control regulation. In the present draft, it is described:
“Article 53
Cooperation with Europol
- Where necessary for the performance of its tasks under this Regulation, within their respective mandates, the EU Centre shall cooperate with Europol.
- Europol and the EU Centre shall provide each other with the fullest possible access to relevant information and information systems, where necessary for the performance of their respective tasks and in accordance with the acts of Union law regulating such access. Without prejudice to the responsibilities of the Executive Director, the EU Centre shall maximise efficiency by sharing administrative functions with Europol, including functions relating to personnel management, information technology (IT) and budget implementation.
- The terms of cooperation and working arrangements shall be laid down in a memorandum of understanding.”
“According to minutes released under FOI, the European police agency pushed for unfiltered access to data that would be obtained under a proposed new scanning system for detecting child sexual abuse images on messaging apps, with a view, experts say, to training AI algorithms.”
Europol has already spoken about the possibility of using Chat Control regulation for a wider purpose than it was originally intended to. Mass surveillance starts from removal of CSAM, using ‘children’ for political gain to coerce population submit under mass surveillance. It will expand, targeting political opponents, journalists, their sources, whistleblowers and anyone who questions the sincerity of people in power, or seeks to reveal information that the governments want to keep secret.
“In the same meeting, Europol proposed that detection be expanded to other crime areas beyond CSAM, and suggested including them in the proposed regulation. It also requested the inclusion of other elements that would ensure another EU law in the making, the Artificial Intelligence Act, would not limit the “use of AI tools for investigations.”
What do the people say?
We condemn the majority of European member states’ position, who are ready to accept EU Commission’s mass surveillance Chat Control regulation. The current proposal is worse than the previous one, while the EU Commission hypocritically claims to safeguard human rights, regardless, plans to use AI to scan every word that citizens write, what photos they take and block those from sharing images or URLs who don’t consent. With the massive false flag rate, the citizens are placed under risk, getting immediately blocked out from the internet services, resulting in lost jobs and reputation, interruption of studies and unable to reach out for help in emergencies.
The planned regulation is violating internationally recognised human rights as ratified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. In many member states, the right to privacy in digital communication is sealed to the constitution. On February 15, the European Court of Human Rights gave a judgment banning the breaking of end-to-end encryption, in the case of Podchasov v. Russia.
“With this outstanding landmark judgment, the ‘client-side scanning’ surveillance on all smartphones proposed by the EU Commission in its Chat Control bill is clearly illegal. It would destroy the protection of everyone instead of investigating suspects,” digital freedom advocate Patrick Breyer
If the member states approve Chat Control regulation, it obligates breaking encryption and directly violates the rule of law in Europe. The regulation is obligating service providers to access all internet users’ devices and scan communications from emails, private chats to Zoom video calls. In short, under Chat Control regulation all users’ confidential and sensitive information is to be scanned, from journalistic sources, lawyer/client, patient/doctor to teens and adults’ private conversations.
“The current proposal is requiring bulk automated searches in and disclosure of private chats, including end-to-end encrypted chats, that might contain illegal photos or videos. If a user opts out of this “upload moderation” of their chats, they would be blocked from receiving or sending any images, videos and URLs.”
A total of 304 scientists and researchers from 33 countries published an open letter on September 23 against the Chat Control regulation. Point 3 states:
“Third, despite the reduction in scope, the imposed detection orders are still indiscriminate: the proposed mandatory scanning targets every citizen, rather than investigating users for which law enforcement has reasonable suspicion that they engage in the exchange of CSAM material. Our phones and the pictures on the phones document our complete lives; giving the government full access to this content is highly intrusive. From a legal perspective, this means that client-side scanning is disproportional and violates the fundamental right to privacy.“
The EU Commission has failed to recognise or address the fact that Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is a product of deeper existing crime and societal problems. According to statistics, over 80 percent of child sexual abuse is taking place by the child’s parents, relatives or friends.
Needless to say, these contacts are not grooming digitally, but in real life. On the contrary, the governments are getting more lenient on paedophiles and protective for the most influential people, who are being charged for child sexual abuse. Incidentally the current proposal is excluding the most influential people (corporates), EU officials and governments themselves and law enforcement from scanning claiming state secrecy and confidential information as a reason.
(12a) In the light of the more limited risk of their use for the purpose of child sexual abuse and the need to preserve confidential information, including classified information, information covered by professional secrecy and trade secrets, electronic communications services that are not publicly available, such as those used for national security purposes, should be excluded from the scope of this Regulation. Accordingly, this Regulation should not apply to interpersonal communications services that are not available to the general public and the use of which is instead restricted to persons involved in the activities of a particular company, organization, body or authority.
We call on citizens in Europe to stand up for their right to privacy, take to the streets and demand that all 27 EU member states’ governments dismiss the compromise text 12406/24 of the proposal by Hungary and reject further drafts or attempts of the implementation of Chat Control regulation. We don’t want to live in a world where governments assume all people are guilty of crime until proven innocent.
The governments and the EU Commission must focus on the educational sector and work on finding solutions together with the educators to learn to identify possible cases of child sexual abuse, establish a robust help network, where the victims of sexual abuse can find professional help in full confidentiality and work on raising awareness within peer networks (e.g. voluntary school network consisting from last year students, providing information sessions to lower classes) and inviting privacy experts to educate teens how to stay safe online.
Mass-surveillance has never helped to solve problems, instead it creates more repression, injustice and discrimination, and is a tool used for abuse of power. Instead, the EU must rein in Europol, roll back surveillance powers and ban the use of AI for police surveillance, military and autonomous weapons development.
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