Transcription
Welcome. My name is Michel Portier and through this information video, I want to provide an update on chat control. It seemed for a moment that chat control had been blocked by the majority of EU countries, but suddenly this week it has still passed. This surprised friend and foe alike and therefore certainly requires some extra explanation. In this video, I will therefore provide an update on the state of affairs. What chat control is again and why it is a problem. I will also explain how it still managed to pass. What we can expect in the coming period and what we can still do now. There is certainly still something to be done, so not all hope is lost. If you find this information important, please share it with everyone you know, because so little is known about it and it is hardly spoken about in the legacy media. And because it affects us all, it is of great importance that everyone is at least well-informed.
What is chat control again? Chat control is the popular name for an EU regulation that will protect children. Central to this is combating the spread of child abuse material, better known as CSAM. However, it is the case that law enforcement agencies have great difficulty in detecting this material because almost everything is sent encrypted nowadays. In earlier versions, there was talk of weakening the security of chat services. But that turned out not to be a good idea because it would entail enormous security risks. Because when you remove or weaken encryption, past situations show that everyone can read along. Because if you weaken encryption, you weaken it for everyone, not just for states and law enforcement agencies. To solve that problem, the intelligence services, or rather the EU, came up with another proposal, namely client scanning. And that means that on your device, on your device, a little spy is installed in the chat apps that, before you send a message or a photo, checks if there is no material in it that the EU does not want. And in this case, that is CSAM material, but in the future, of course, it could also be other material, because you never know what such a spy transmits. So that is already a risk. In the previous proposals, it was actually always the case that only known material had to be detected. This was done by adding a database to your phone, to the messaging services, the fingerprints of known material, with which the photo you wanted to send was compared, and if there was a match, it was sent to the EU. However, there can also be a match without your photo containing illicit material, and that chance is half a percent, and with millions of messages per day, that still results in quite a few false positives. And all those photos have to be viewed, and that means someone will look at your photo. So those false positives lead to major privacy problems. Furthermore, you can also say that it is not effective. Because when an abuser wants to send the material, he will of course not do so via messaging services that are actively scanned. So it is not effective. They disappear, if they are not already there, to other platforms. It is also not proportional, because you can certainly ask yourself whether you should always scan all messages from all Europeans to detect a very small group of criminals.
Additionally, it is possible to search for unknown material. This is even more problematic, because for that you don't need a database of known material on your phone, but you need to install an AI. So artificial intelligence that scans all your photos just before you send them to see if there might be abuse material. But AI cannot scan for abuse material at all. It is not good at that. It can detect nude photos. And those nude photos, of children for example, can of course also be a photo of your child in the bath that you sent to your father or mother or your partner or something like that. But it could also be two minors, boys and girls, sending each other some racy photos. All of that is detected. But because AI cannot detect whether it is a photo or a proper photo, it has to go to some law enforcement officer who has to look and determine whether this is abuse material or not. This means that the photos you wanted to send privately will be viewed by an EU official. While you thought only your partner or family member would see it. You lose privacy. Because there are always people who look along who have to determine whether it is not abuse material. CSAM. If it is not abuse material and such an official decides to classify your material as objectionable, then I will leave it to the viewer's imagination what happens to your life when your house is emptied one morning and they come to get you out of bed, even if you are eventually acquitted. This is not a fictional example, because this has already happened a number of times. And yes, that is a big problem. And that problem will only get much bigger, because already with the detection of material, there are already very many false positives. Where do those false positives come from, you might ask, if there is no chat control yet? Well, actually, companies are not allowed to scan these kinds of images at all, because they are private images. So in 2020, Chat Control 1.0 was implemented, approved, whereby companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc., email providers can already voluntarily scan for material. And this is actually already happening on a large scale. And it also sometimes leads to very unpleasant situations where your private photos or those of your children are removed from your cloud account, or worse, your account is closed, or even worse, you are reported while you actually had nothing to hide. Or perhaps you did have something to hide, but other people thought that material should not be there. This is what we call voluntary scanning and is already happening on a large scale with unencrypted material.
So, around 2022, the first proposals for the mandatory scanning order came, so to speak, and that is actually client-side scanning, to be able to scan that material on your phone as well, and thus, as it were, break the encryption. And because the encryption cannot be broken, it naturally has to be scanned on your phone. This has been going on for a while, and I kept an eye on it. But there was always a blocking majority of EU countries that did not consider it a good idea. So certainly in 2022-2023, I kept an eye on it, and it ended with a whimper. In 2024, it actually became a bit more exciting, because the Netherlands suddenly turned out to be undecided. And then I spoke about it on De Nieuwe Wereld. Then I told a larger audience what this entailed. And it has also received the name Chat Control by then, because it did not have it before. Thanks to that conversation on De Nieuwe Wereld, some members of parliament woke up, and they then requested a debate, and the minister was actually in favor of large-scale scanning. So they actually want this, but it was the AIVD (General Intelligence and Security Service) that said that it causes major problems with digital resilience. In other words, it is such a big security risk that you should not want this at all. And because that security risk is so great, from that moment on, it is also stated in the regulation that EU officials and defense personnel are excluded from chat control. So the entire EU, top officials, you name it, their messages are not scanned. So that is interesting. Of course, that only applies to us, because only we would send such messages, and they would never do that. But fortunately, the Netherlands changed its mind. So the public was informed, and awareness of this also increased outside the Netherlands, fortunately. And well, after that, Poland became president at the beginning of 2025, and it seemed to be off the table again for a while. I must add, it is all backroom politics, so none of this has ever been official, because each time the proposal was not put on the agenda. When the sessions convene, it is already decided whether the proposal will be put to a vote. They don't do that, because if the proposal is voted down, or rather, the majority abstains from voting, it is definitively removed from the agenda, and they don't want that. So each time it is removed from the agenda a few days in advance, and then the next president can put it back on the agenda. Well, after last year, November, October, that became Poland. Poland is a strong opponent of this and therefore did not put it on the agenda. But with you, Denmark suddenly became president, and they decided to put it back on the agenda and added a number of things to it. Those additions are very interesting, because for the first time, it was stated in the chat control document that there must also be mandatory scanning for unknown material. So where until now it was about known material, now AI must really look along to see if your photos are appropriate. I already explained the problem with that in an earlier slide. Additionally, they added something else, namely mandatory identification for all chat services where you chat one-on-one. So that concerns email, WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Telegram, social media. And legally, people are even discussing whether games where you can chat one-on-one would also require identification. Because imagine being able to chat anonymously with someone, that is of course not the intention. So this would de facto mean the end of anonymous communication on the internet for everyone. Furthermore, an age limit has been set: if you are under 16, you are not allowed to install any chat services at all. This is done via the App Stores. This means that the App Store of Apple and Android will be obliged to add identification. In this case, it concerns age identification, so that you can only install apps where you can exchange messages after identification. This is also called digital house arrest. To facilitate this, which is not in the proposals, it is being discussed that the digital ID, the eIDAS regulation that the EU will soon invoke, should be used for this, all to protect our children, of course.
Well, there was so much backlash, and now it was actually very exciting, because in this case it was Germany that was no longer decisive when it came to chat. Germany was very strange, because Germany has always been a country that is a strong advocate for privacy. They may have a past, but suddenly they were unable to make a decision due to internal political tensions. So Denmark decided to put the proposal on the agenda in the hope that they would get it through. But on October 8th, we were all very happy, because Germany decided not to vote in favor, and thus the whole thing would be off the table. But it was a bit of a half victory, because the mandatory identification and the age limit for chat remained. And I must say, although I acknowledge all the problems that smartphones and social media have and their effects on children, and that is not good, I acknowledge that. But a complete ban where everyone has to identify themselves goes too far for me, of course, because that is also not proportional. So we thought it was over, and we would wait for another EU president who might bring it back to the table. Or there would be a vote on chat control without the mandatory detection order. Because that expectation was actually high, as the voluntary detection order was also expiring, which would actually make scanning material on cloud services illegal. And they did not want that at the EU. But in principle, we thought it would be over for now, except for those age and identification obligations, of course. But then it happened, because Denmark, last week, still came with a new proposal to reintroduce the mandatory detection order, i.e., mandatory scanning, through a backdoor. Denmark's new proposal came out of nowhere, because they had to and would push the regulation through. There was a reason for that, because the voluntary chat control would expire. So that would mean that all cloud services would no longer be allowed to scan for this material, because it concerns private documents, of course. So what we all expected was that a proposal would be pushed through that would be voted on, which would at least include the voluntary detection, but the mandatory detection, i.e., mandatory chat control, would have been removed. Well, that is also what happened. And with that, they pushed through something that all countries will probably agree to next week. But there is a catch, there is a fly in the ointment, because they have added a number of articles. Including an article 4, which states that messaging services are no longer obliged to carry out all those scans, but that they can be designated, or if they see it themselves, that if there is a risk that they could facilitate CSAM, they must still implement chat control. And you can imagine that with end-to-end encryption, there is always a risk that a service will transmit CSAM material. That is the risk of life that such things can happen. So critics are now saying: "Yes, that's nice. It's perhaps no longer mandatory, but all services that run that risk must therefore implement this as well." And it's even worse, because not only do messages and photos have to be scanned again, but text also has to be scanned now. That is very interesting, because this is new. This means that AI also has to scan your texts to see if you are not grooming someone. So if you send love messages to someone else, and the AI thinks, "Hmm, maybe he's doing that with a minor," then those texts also have to be sent. And the big problem is, of course, that this is a kind of function creep, because if you start scanning texts and you have no control over it, an intelligence service can of course scan all texts. So this is an interesting and dangerous development, and it is completely new. So now nothing is mandatory, except if you run the risk that CSAM material will be scanned. And if the risk is there, and it always is, then all texts must now also be scanned, because you might be grooming a minor. It is interesting, of course, that the same minors are no longer allowed on those messaging services at all. So why you still have to scan for grooming messages is a mystery to me, but time will tell what that is for. And of course, everything must be reported to the authorities. And in the same order, it has not been removed from the proposal that no chats under the age of 16 are allowed. So all children under 16 will get what they call digital house arrest. This also applies in Australia. It is striking how coordinated this is now happening all over the world. And there is still no right to anonymous message exchanges.
Well, as I said, everything is done through backdoors. So the diplomats agreed on all of this yesterday, and the proposal has been adopted. So when the EU Council convenes, they will vote in favor. But we don't know more than that, because maybe there are still countries for or against it. But in any case, it appears from the discussions that this proposal will simply go through completely. Of course, the Netherlands can veto, so perhaps it is not too late. So call your members of parliament to ensure that a "no" is perhaps still said next week. But that chance is not very high, of course, if the diplomats speaking on behalf of the minister have already reached an agreement on this. In other words, chat control has still entered through a backdoor.
Well, what now? Well, assuming that the European Council will simply vote in favor of this at last, which we are of course not very happy about. Well, a number of things are going to happen. Then there will be a so-called trialogue with the European Parliament. That means that that proposal will go to the European Parliament. And then the trialogue comes. That is probably because it is the Commission, Council, European Parliament. I am not a politician, so what do I know about it? And they will create a kind of compromise proposal for chat control. So there is still hope. It is possible that the Members of the European Parliament will say, "Well, these ridiculous things must be removed." So in the coming period, it is really important to convince the Members of the European Parliament never to vote for this proposal. By the way, it is true that the European Parliament indicated a few years ago that they were not in favor of this, but elections have since taken place, so you never know exactly what will happen. And we also know that they do not always keep their word and that there may be other political interests that might cause them to vote in favor after all. So it is a risk. Not all hope is lost, but it is scary that it has come this far, because that has never succeeded before. If it is eventually introduced, then lawyers say that the chance that it violates human rights, the right to privacy and respect for private life, is so great that there is a very high chance that someone will start a lawsuit against it at the European Court of Human Rights and that it will not pass. But that is a long process, and by then it will have already been introduced. So we actually don't want to let it get that far, and we certainly don't want to run the risks that it might still succeed. Because perhaps the court will still vote in favor because they consider the interests of children so important that they will approve this disproportionate measure. We do not know that for sure.
Well, if you want to know what to do, look at fightchatcontrol.eu and there you will find the different people you can contact to ensure that this terrible, this terrible regulation does not pass. www.fightchatcontrol.eu. EU. And that brings me to my last slide, and that is that we are actually entering an era where the digital machine is starting to grip us, and many people do not realize this. Chat control is just one of the things that are coming in the near future. Because the digital ID, the central bank digital currency, so electronic money, a European intelligence service, and the right of big tech to scan everything on your phone to train AI have all been on the agenda this week. And the big problem is that we are entering a kind of digital prison, or rather an open-air prison, where everything we do in real life will be determined by rules set in the digital system by the powers that be, in this case the EU. I am very concerned about this, and chat control is just one of these things. The increasing age identification that is coming will put unwelcome content behind some kind of age gate, which will mean the end of free access to information on the internet. I am very concerned about this, and if you are too, please forward this video because there are really many people who know nothing about it at all. Many people will say, "I have nothing to hide." But privacy begins with having something to hide, namely what you want to share with someone else and what you do not want to share with someone else. And there are plenty of things that I share with you, but other things I share, for example, only with my wife or my children or with good friends. That is what privacy is. If all EU measures, and especially chat control, pass, then the EU will essentially have a kind of Big Brother in your phone or on your devices, with whom they can look into your digital life. That gives unprecedented power, because they can make many predictions. They can control you in certain ways. And that data leads to a kind of surveillance society where the EU knows more about you than you know about yourself. And they can influence you with it, but they can also, for example, shut down many things. With such a digital ID, for example, it is possible to set up all sorts of gates in real life based on your behavior, dictating what you can and cannot do. Well, that might be for a next video. The false positives and the disproportionality of chat control should already be enough to prevent these draconian measures from passing. So again, if you find this important, make sure this goes viral and that all people, even outside the echo chambers, know about this, because it is very quiet in the media, and this will affect us all. Thank you.