EU passes 'chat monitoring' draft: IG, Discord, Gmail... all private messages included in scanning

European Parliament Revives Mass Scanning of Private Messages: 314 Against, 276 In Favor, 17 Abstentions on July 9 — Instagram, Discord, Gmail Among Platforms Back in Scope Until 2028

(Previous: Microsoft Confirms It Will Provide BitLocker Keys to FBI on Request — Is Your Encryption Really Safe?) (Context: Cake Wallet Founder Launches Radar: Messaging App Integrated with BTC Lightning Network, Using Signal Encryption Protocol)

Table of Contents

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• Whose Private Messages Will Be Opened Again
• Six Figures Refute "Scanning Protects Children"
• Cryptography Is the Real Defense

The EU battle has been ongoing since March. Chat Control version one, which proposed indiscriminate mass scanning of private communications, was rejected twice by the European Parliament in March and was widely seen as "dead." Unexpectedly, on July 9, the European People's Party (EPP) used an emergency procedure to put the proposal back on the agenda, and the very same group of MEPs voted to revive it.

The vote result that day was 314 against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions — the majority was against. However, to reject a legislative proposal in the European Parliament, an absolute majority of 361 votes is needed. The opposition fell short by 47 votes. This procedural technicality has brought the surveillance rules, which a substantive majority did not want, back into Europeans' phones.

Whose Private Messages Will Be Opened Again

According to the vote result, the transitional rules will remain in effect until April 3, 2028, or until a permanent version is agreed upon. The scope covers communication and email services operated by US tech companies: private messages on Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, Xbox, as well as Gmail and iCloud mailboxes, are all back on the list of services that can be scanned "without a court warrant and without prior suspicion."

A key detail on voting day: encrypted communications were granted a symbolic exemption (e.g., WhatsApp). This sounds like a concession, but in reality, service providers cannot scan end-to-end encrypted content anyway. The exemption is more an acknowledgment of reality than a policy concession.

Six Figures Refute "Scanning Protects Children"

The opposition bloc has data. Former MEP and digital rights activist Patrick Breyer stated bluntly: "Chat Control moving forward against the will of the majority of MEPs is a farce that harms democracy. The real losers are our children."

He likened indiscriminate scanning to "trying to protect children with mass surveillance — like mopping the floor while the tap is still running" and stressed that full Chat Control "is as unacceptable as opening everyone's physical letters indiscriminately."

According to the European Commission's own report, at least six figures point to the same conclusion: mass scanning has not truly protected children:

• Since 2022, reports of suspected abuse in the US have decreased by 50%.
• In 2024, mass scanning of private messages accounted for only 36% of all abuse reports; most leads came from public posts and cloud storage.
• Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) found that 48% of reports had no criminal relevance.
• Of the investigations launched, 40% targeted minors themselves.
• Of reports generated by Meta, an estimated 99% were duplicate hits on "known material," of limited help in stopping ongoing abuse.
• The Commission itself acknowledged there is no evidence that indiscriminate scanning of private messages has increased conviction rates or saved any additional children.

The stance of survivors is even more direct. Privacy advocate Alexander Hanff, who used confidential communication channels to obtain justice for 28 male students and helped convict multiple perpetrators, said: "Chat Control is not designed to protect children. It's about large tech companies like Meta and Google wanting to access our data, and states wanting to expand mass surveillance."

A survivor using the pseudonym Marcel Schneider, currently suing Meta in court, put it plainly: voluntary corporate mass surveillance has not actually stopped abuse. Dorothée Hahne, deputy chair of the survivors' advocacy group MOGiS e.V., said: "As survivors, we are watching our 'safe spaces' and protected communication channels being endangered or destroyed by this measure."

Cryptography Is the Real Defense

The most telling detail in this whole episode is that while governments and big tech companies almost always seek ways to scan private messages, those that escape are end-to-end encrypted communications like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage — not because of a special policy exemption, but because with end-to-end encryption, only the sender and recipient hold the keys; the server technically cannot scan the content.

European communication and email service providers have never implemented Chat Control. This precisely validates what the crypto community has long argued: reliable privacy never comes from regulators' good intentions, but from cryptography itself. When both governments and platforms are eyeing private messages, encryption is one of the few sovereign tools users still hold.

The battle is not over. The transitional rules only last until 2028. The permanent version, the "CSAM Regulation," also known as Chat Control 2.0, will resume negotiations in September. The conditions set by the European Parliament this time are: scanning orders should target actual suspects; an EU Center for Child Protection should be established to remove known material; messaging software should incorporate "Security-by-Design" standards, rather than indiscriminate mass surveillance of the entire population.