Sippel Draft on Chat Control – Mass Surveillance Set to Continue, Sparking Renewed Protests
Following our previous press release regarding the potential extension of “Chat Control 1.0”, there is a significant development:
The European Parliament’s Rapporteur, Birgit Sippel (S&D), has presented her draft report (Original, unofficial consolidated version). In it, she proposes extending the authorization for warrantless Chat Control, albeit with new restrictions: the most unreliable technologies—scanning text messages and automatically assessing unknown visuals—are to be excluded.
Mass Surveillance Remains the Status Quo
While this proposal marks a partial victory for civil society, the “Stop Chat Control” alliance warns against celebrating too soon. The draft still permits the warrantless mass screening of every citizen’s private chats for “known material” (hash scanning).
In practice, the proposed changes would make little difference. Approximately 99% of all chat reports sent to the police come from a single US giant, Meta. Meta only searches for “known” material anyway—a practice they would be permitted to continue under this draft. Consequently, the flood of 48% false positives (criminally irrelevant chats—according to the German BKA) stems almost entirely from this search for “known” material.
Why this form of Chat Control remains unreliable and dangerous:
- Context & Intent Blindness: Algorithms are blind to context. What is illegal in the US (the basis for many hash databases) is not necessarily illegal in each EU Member State. Furthermore, machines lack any concept of intent: An image posted thoughtlessly in a group chat or a meme considered “funny” by teenagers triggers an automatic report of all participants to the police—even if there is no criminal intent and, therefore, no crime.
- Criminalization of Minors: Already today, 40% of investigations in Germany target minors, not organized predator rings. Mass hash scanning is the primary driver of this issue.
- Police Overload: The German Federal Crime Agency BKA reports that nearly half of all flagged chats are criminally irrelevant. Continuing mass reporting ties up resources that are desperately needed for genuine investigations against producers and abusers.
- Failure to Protect: Merely searching for already known images does not stop ongoing abuse, nor does it rescue children currently in danger.
Furthermore, perpetrators can easily migrate to encrypted messengers where no Chat Control takes place. As providers increasingly adopt encryption, the number of chats reported to the police has dropped by 50% since 2022, rendering the mass scanning of private messages increasingly irrelevant for investigators.
My Statement on the Sippel Draft:
“Both children and adults deserve a paradigm shift in online child protection, not token measures. Whether looking for ‘known’ or ‘unknown’ content, the principle remains: the post office cannot simply open and scan every letter at random. Searching only for known images fails to stop ongoing abuse or rescue victims.The consequences are already visible: Police are drowning in false positives that drain valuable resources from the complex hunt for organized predator networks. The EU Parliament must now follow Ms. Sippel’s logic to its natural conclusion: If warrantless mass surveillance is wrong for text, it is also wrong for images. Real child protection requires secure apps (‘Security by Design’), proactive cleaning of the public web, and targeted investigations against suspects—not Chat Control.”
Members of the European Parliament now have the opportunity to table amendments to the draft report until 10 February, followed by negotiations. This process will be accompanied by citizen protests, which are needed now more than ever.
Contact MEPs: fightchatcontrol.eu
patrick-breyer.de/en/sippel-dr…
