The Council of the European Union (EU) will discuss and vote on Tuesday, October 14, 2025 on the controversial scan proposal of messages, called by its detractors «Chat Control», to prevent and combat child sexual abuse. The project, which was proposed three years ago, in 2022, establishes a legal framework to detect, denounce and remove online material from child sexual abuse. In practice, this It consists of automatically scanning what people send in messaging apps —Texts, images, videos and audios – and notifying authorities if suspicious content of child sexual abuse is distinguished. Beyond the noble end of the proposal against the crime, it generates a stir for the loss of privacy that it implies for people in their personal conversations. In addition, it unleashes fears of the contents that may be alerted to the authorities by mistake. In addition to multiple criticisms on social networks, already some reported by cryptootics, the initiative has unleashed the creation and activism of different organizations that fight to stop itas Stopchatcontrol in France that together with people’s signatures against. «This proposal would establish a massive and permanent surveillance of private communications throughout Europe. It is urgent to alert our governments and the members of the European Parliament, and make it clear that we reject this plan, which threatens our fundamental freedoms,» says Stopchatcontrol on their website.
There is division between countries for and against «chat control»
According to Eurodiputados reports compiled by the FightChatcontrol organization, 12 European Union countries are in favor of the project. These are Spain, Italy Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Chipre, Croatia, Sweden, Denmark, France, Romania and Portugal. For its part, 8 countries, Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia, have expressed rejections and doubts about the proposal to the concerns it generates. Meanwhile, the other 7 that complete the block, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Slovakia and Sweden, do not currently show a position in favor or against, according to reports. Therefore, Your vote will be key so that Europeans maintain or lose privacy in their messages. From the signal messaging app, they said the last week: «We are alarmed by the reports that indicate that Germany is on the verge of a radical and catastrophic change, reversing its long -standing opposition and based on principles to the proposal of chat control of the EU that, if approved, could mean the end of the right to privacy in Europe.» «If they gave us to choose between integrating a signal surveillance machine or abandoning the market, we would do it. It is not a decision that we make lightly, and our great hope is to never have to face it,» added Meredith Whittaker, the president of the app, in a statement. The engineer and famous youtuber Anders “CTO” Larsson, a technology specialist, called for awareness about it: “The main communication of young people is digital, so allow me to explain this so that the previous generation can also understand it. This is the digital equivalent of installing mandatory microphones everywhere in the house, the bedrooms, the car, the gardens and the forest of all”. «Each photo, each message and each file you send will be automatically inspected, without your consent and without you realizing. It is not about catching criminals. It is a massive surveillance imposed on the 450 million citizens of the European Union,» says, on the other hand, Fightchatcontrol. The organization also indicates that EU politicians could exempt this surveillance under «professional secrecy». In this sense, sentence: «They would have privacy. Your family and you, no. Demand justice.»