As if anyone still believes Europe is a place where free speech is protected by law:
On 30 March 2022 the EU Commission intends to make a second legislative proposal, which is to force all providers of email, messaging and chat services to comprehensively search all private messages in the absence of any suspicion.
According to the case-law of the European Court of Justice the permanent and comprehensive automated analysis of private communications violates fundamental rights and is prohibited (paragraph 177). For this reason, Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer has filed a complaint against U.S. companies Facebook and Google with the data protection authorities for violating the General Data Protection Regulation. Former judge of the European Court of Justice Prof. Dr. Ninon Colneric has extensively analysed the plans and concludes in a legal assessment that the EU legislative plans on chat control are not in line with the case law of the European Court of Justice and violate the fundamental rights of all EU citizens to respect for privacy, to data protection and to freedom of expression. Chat Control - The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence
How does this affect you?
- All of your chat conversations and emails will be automatically searched for suspicious content. Nothing remains confidential or secret. There is no requirement of a court order or an initial suspicion for searching your messages. It occurs always and automatically.
- If an algorithms classifies the content of a message as suspicious, your private or intimate photos may be viewed by staff and contractors of international corporations and police authorities. Also your private nude photos may be looked at by people not known to you, in whose hands your photos are not safe.
- Flirts and sexting may be read by staff and contractors of international corporations and police authorities, because text recognition filters looking for “child grooming” frequently falsely flag intimate chats.
- You can falsely be reported and investigated for allegedly disseminating child sexual exploitation material. Messaging and chat control algorithms are known to flag completely legal vacation photos of children on a beach, for example. According to Swiss federal police authorities, 86% of all machine-generated reports turn out to be without merit. 40% of all criminal investigation procedures initiated in Germany for “child pornography” target minors.
- On your next trip overseas, you can expect big problems. Machine-generated reports on your communications may have been passed on to other countries, such as the USA, where there is no data privacy – with incalculable results.
- Intelligence services and hackers may be able to spy on your private chats and emails. The door will be open for anyone with the technical means to read your messages if secure encryption is removed in order to be able to screen messages.
- This is only the beginning. Once the technology for messaging and chat control has been established, it becomes very easy to use them for other purposes. And who guarantees that these incrimination machines will not be used in the future on our smart phones and laptops?
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