EU Parliament Revives 'Chat Control 1.0' Mass Scanning Despite Majority Opposition

The European Parliament has cleared the way for the return of suspicionless mass scanning of private messages until 2028, reversing a stance it took twice in March. The outcome hinged on procedure rather than support: more MEPs voted to reject the regulation (314 to 276) and to limit scanning to judicially identified suspects (322 to 255) than voted for it, but neither motion reached the absolute majority of 361 votes needed to pass. The practical effect is that US platforms — Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, Xbox, Gmail, and iCloud among them — may again scan users’ unencrypted direct messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. End-to-end encrypted services like WhatsApp remain exempt, as they were never scanned in practice, and European providers have never adopted the measures.

Former MEP and privacy advocate Patrick Breyer called the result a democratic farce and argued it removes any incentive for EU governments to negotiate a targeted, permanent framework. He and the critics cite figures undercutting the ‘protection gap’ narrative: US abuse reports have halved since 2022 as encryption spread, private-chat scanning produced only 36 percent of 2024 reports, nearly half of German BKA alerts were not criminally relevant, 40 percent of resulting investigations targeted minors themselves, and roughly 99 percent of Meta’s reports involved already-known material. The Commission itself concedes there is no evidence the practice increased convictions or rescued children.

The fight now shifts to the permanent ‘Chat Control 2.0’ regulation, with negotiations resuming in September. Parliament wants mandatory, court-ordered detection against actual suspects, an EU center to scrub known abuse material from the public web, and security-by-design standards for messaging apps — while member states cling to voluntary, blanket scanning. Abuse survivors quoted in the piece back the privacy position, arguing that confidential communication was essential to securing convictions and that mass corporate surveillance serves data-harvesting and state monitoring interests rather than victims.