Pegasus for everyone

On December 12, 2024, after a intense campaign supported by European civil society, we managed to block the draft European regulation on the automated monitoring of intimate conversations of European citizens, known as Chat Control. A coalition of governments was achieved that prevented a qualified majority from being achieved. Spain was not one of them, since from the beginning it stood out with one of the most extreme positions in favor. A document that was leaked in 2023 brought to light the following statements from the Ministry of the Interior: "Ideally, in our view, it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption. […] Automatic content detection in interpersonal communications is key."

Far from wanting to avoid another Pegasus case, we are now facing a Pegasus for everyone.

The Danish presidency of the EU has recently promoted the return of this nightmare, with a version still more radical and contravening the mandate of the European Parliament.

This proposal includes mandatory mass scanning of private communications and aims to break secure encryption by forcing client scanning into your messaging apps. And, beware: government and military accounts would be exempt from this intrusive scanning. Privacy for the powerful, mass surveillance for the citizens. The purpose of this regulation couldn't be clearer. a memorandum A leaked report from the German government confirms that the Consell's Legal Service believes that this plan, like the 2024 attempt, continues to violate fundamental rights.

Chat Control is the popular name for the regulation that establishes rules to prevent and combat the sexual abuse of minors (Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse Regulation).

Contrary to what its title indicates, there is not a single line in this legislation about how to prevent and combat child sexual abuse. Not a word. It is not a law against child sexual abuse that harms the internet. It is only a law against the internet, which ignores child sexual abuse and only uses it to justify its propaganda against a democratic internet.

Child abuse is horrific. It is a shame to waste efforts using it as a simple excuse for other purposes. The brutal influence of conservative, technophobic lobbies with a vision of the internet as a space they must control and that should be monopolized only by large, dominant players is evident.

What is being sought and would be achieved if Chat Control is approved is reminiscent of the darkest times in history, in addition to exuding incompetence. It establishes mass surveillance and annuls the sanctity of communications. It proposes a technology that is in itself a security breach. Attacks distributed systems and SMEs and startups technological in favor of monopolies. It is the opposite of a solution.

Regarding child sexual abuse, statistics such as those ofWHO They indicate that most are committed by people known to the child, such as family members, friends, or neighbors. Regulations that truly address child sexual abuse and the material generated by abusers would be truly urgent and would seek to provide teachers, pediatricians, educational psychologists, social workers, specialized police officers, and other frontline professionals with the means, tools, and legal framework to identify and respond to these types of cases.

There is none of this in Chat Control. That this nightmare arrives under the guise of "protecting children"—an argument used by dictatorships around the world—is outrageous.

Knowing this information is important. Just this Friday, the position of the EU member states was reaffirmed. Those that rejected it were Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, and, at the last minute, Germany. which again stopped the projectSpain, despite the efforts of civil society, is not one of them. Perhaps it envies Russia, where they already use Max, a status app installed on devices around the world that monitors, for example, whether anyone searches for "LGBTQ" on the internet.