The European Union (EU) Council has made a last-minute withdrawal of the EU’s highly controversial planned “Chat Control” legislation, which was due to vote yesterday. This would have effectively introduced mass digital surveillance by means of fully automated real-time monitoring of all messaging and chats.
The EU would appear to finally have heeded the harsh warnings that have been coming from the cybersecurity and communication sectors since the controversial ruling was first proposed in 2022. For the six months prior to Thursday’s decision, the EU Belgian Council presidency has been sitting on a deadlock between EU countries. Germany and Poland have heeded privacy experts’ warnings of a potential police state. But Ireland and Spain are pressing for draconian new online laws to fight a rise in online child sexual abuse material that has grown since the start of Europe’s widespread lockdowns two and a half years ago.
US-based geopolitical newspaper POLITICO obtained a copy of Belgium’s eventual proposal, which sounded an immediate warning bell in the tech sector. Under the plan, messaging apps would scan pictures and links when users uploaded them via their services. Users were to be informed of this in the terms and conditions that most would not bother to read. Users who refused to tick the terms and conditions box would be blocked from sending pictures and links. Those who did tick it would be effectively signing away any right to online digital privacy. Highly secure apps using end-to-end encryption like WhatsApp, Signal, and Messenger would also have had to respect these measures. The draft proposal, however, exempted “accounts used by the State for national security purposes.”
Earlier this summer, Meredith Whittaker, the president of encrypted messaging service Signal, told the EU: “End-to-end encryption is the technology we have to enable privacy in an age of unprecedented state and corporate surveillance. And the dangerous desire to undermine it never seems to die.”
Telegram chief still facing charges in Paris
While encrypting messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram are used by cybercriminals and child pornographers, they are also used by pro-democracy movements fighting repressive regimes. Telegram, for example, has been used extensively in Ukraine to organize resistance ever since the start of the Russian invasion, doubtless angering Moscow. However, it is highly unlikely that the bureaucrats have simply given up on their strongly held belief that the state has the right to monitor and control all personal and business communication across Europe and beyond. A new proposal draft is doubtless being prepared.
Telegram CEO, owner, and founder Pavel Durov is, for example, still in Paris facing what many regard as trumped-up charges relating to the online distribution of child pornography and illegal drugs. The owner of social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk, also CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has publicly called on French President Emmanuel Macron to explain the circumstances surrounding Durov’s arrest, claiming that France is trying to suppress freedom of speech online by globally censoring views not approved by the European Union EU.
Disappearance of mystery blonde
Russian-born Durov’s surprise arrest as soon as he landed in Paris on August 23 has already sparked a number of conspiracy theories, pointing the finger at various heads of state. There is also speculation surrounding the latest twist in the Telegram tale.
When Durov was arrested on the steps of his Embraer Legacy 600 private jet, he was in the company of a blonde, green-eyed Russian bombshell, 24-year-old Yulia Vavilova. No one has since been able to locate the mysterious Vavilova, a Dubai-based crypto-coach from Moscow, and her family in Russia say they have also heard nothing from her since Durov’s arrest. This has led to speculation that Vavilova, who had previously been traveling with Durov, was planted by some security services to trick him into landing in Paris, where the French authorities could arrest him.
But the mystery still remains as to why Durov should have ordered his private jet to land in Paris when he is said to have know that EU was gunning for him and that charges against him relating to Telegram were already being prepared.
