E.U. Lawmakers Agree on ‘Chat Control’ Limitations ⇥ techcrunch.com

Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch:

The MEPs said they had reached agreement on a substantially revised version of the draft legislation.

Key changes parliamentarians have found agreement over — on the detection side — include putting a number of limits on scanning. Firstly their proposal would limit scanning to individuals or groups who are suspected of child sexual abuse (making it targeted, not blanket); it would also limit it to only known and unknown CSAM (removing the requirement to scan for grooming); and — importantly — it would limit scanning to platforms that are not end-to-end-encrypted (E2EE); thereby removing the risk the legislation could force E2EE platforms to backdoor or weaken their security.

Pirate Party and E.U. Parliament member Patrick Breyer:

Even if this compromise, which is supported from the progressive to the conservative camp, is not perfect on all points, it is a historic success that removing chat control and rescuing secure encryption is the common aim of the entire Parliament. We are doing the exact opposite of most EU governments who want to destroy digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption. Governments must finally accept that this highly dangerous bill can only be fundamentally changed or not be passed at all. The fight against authoritarian chat control must be pursued with all determination!

Quite a different outcome from the new legal powers granted in the U.K.. Despite concerns that lawmakers in Europe would mandate weakening end-to-end encryption, it seems they have listened to experts and concluded that doing so would be detrimental to security and privacy.