Surveillance dossier in the EU Council: no agreement on chat control again
The Council Presidency was once again forced to remove the messenger surveillance plan from the agenda. Opponents speak of a dead horse.
The EU Commission has once again failed to extend the possibilities for monitoring messenger chats: once again, no majority could be won in the relevant committee.
(Image: Michele Ursi/Shutterstock.com)
The Hungarian EU Presidency is no different to its predecessors in the dispute over chat control. On Wednesday morning, the current presidency was forced to take the planned vote on the member states' position on the EU Commission's hotly contested draft regulation on online surveillance under the banner of the fight against child sexual abuse off the agenda of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU Member States (Coreper). This was because it became apparent that there would once again be no qualified majority in the committee for a common Council position on the matter.
This time, the Netherlands tipped the scales. They declared on Tuesday that they were not in a position to vote in favor of the current Hungarian proposal or to abstain. This means that a blocking minority has once again emerged, as Germany, Sweden and Austria, among others, do not want to support the proposed line.
Concerns about encryption remain
The essence of their concerns is that the current Council Presidency has also been unable to dispel concerns about the protection of fundamental rights such as privacy and the security of the digital space. Chat control threatens to undermine end-to-end encryption.
Hungary previously proposed limiting the controversial disclosure orders to known abuse. The search for new relevant images or videos as well as evidence of stalking children online (grooming) should be excluded.
Liberals emphasize: The fight goes on
Chat control has "no place in a constitutional state", emphasized Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) on Tuesday before the Coreper meeting. He rejected the new proposal of the Hungarian Council Presidency: "Massive and unjustified scanning of private communication is a massive and unjustified intrusion into privacy."
MEP Moritz Körner (FDP) advised the Commission and the member states on Wednesday that they should "finally realize: if you are riding a dead horse, you should dismount". The Council leadership wants to continue trying to reach an agreement and will continue to actively hold talks with the EU countries to this end. However, Liberal Member of the Bundestag Maximilian Funke-Kaiser also assured that the fight against this would continue.
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Multiple criticism
At the same time, civil society, academia and associations continue to criticize the planned surveillance of encrypted messenger services such as WhatsApp, Signal and Threema. For example, the Data Protection and IT Security Working Group of the German Informatics Society (GI) and its umbrella organization, the Council of European Informatics Societies, are urgently warning of an erosion of fundamental civil liberties.
Furthermore, "the planned corruption of confidential digital infrastructure would also lead to high risks for trade secrets". Instead of general surveillance measures, "targeted, legally clearly defined solutions based on existing laws" are required. The benefits of chat control would also be doubtful, "because the expected flood of content falsely classified as illegal will tie up capacities that are lacking for the prosecution of genuine criminal offenses".
(nie)
