- Signal has claimed that the EU ‘Chat Control’ Legislation can be compared to Malware
- It is also considering leaving Europe if the bill was adopted
- Chat control is back on the legislators’ Table on October 14
Safe encrypted messaging -App signal said the EU proposal to scan all citizens’ private messages would act as targeted spyware.
What has been called by his critics, Chat Control, is the Europe Commission’s response to online child security. According to the latest iteration of the text, all messaging platforms operating in the EU would be required to scan all URLs, images and videos shared by their users looking for material for sexual abuse of children (CSAM).
This mandatory scan is expected to occur directly on the device and in the case of encrypted apps before messages are encrypted. A claim that according to Signal, cannot be compatible with how encryption works.
“Apart from the legal bit, it is exactly how malware works. It compromises your device to access information,” Signal’s Vice President of Global Affairs said the Authority Tiwari.
“Very simply said, the idea that a device will scan content before it is encrypted for us, negates the very purpose of encryption.”
First was revealed in 2022 and has never been closer to agreeing on the proposal for sexual abuse (CSAR) with a crucial meeting set at October 14.
The signal could leave Europe
The signal has repeatedly said that if a requirement to create an encryption back door was to be allowed the company would rather leave this market than weaken encryption. A position that Meredith Whittaker, president of Non-Profit Signal Foundation, recently repeated to a German news site.
Tiwari, who spoke during an online event organized by the European Greens Party, also confirmed that there are no plans “to make two versions of signal.” One who scans the client side and one that does not.
“For signal, this is an existential disastrous risk of providing our services in the European Union. It would negate the primary promises to our users and I think it is a risk that many people will meet,” he said.
Signal and other experts have long argued that scanning the client side would break encryption protection used by the best VPN and other encrypted apps to protect your data from unauthorized access. In the end, this will also create a vulnerable endpoint that malicious actors can also exploit.
Germany: The decisive factor
In front of a crucial Chat Control Meeting for October 14, Germany remains a crucial vote. Still, the government continues to send mixed messages.
Germany is among the countries that have actually moved their positions before the important day. After participating in the countries that opposed mandatory chat scanning in September, the nation is now among the indecisive countries again, according to the latest data.
This is why Whittaker encourages German citizens to “let German politicians know how harmful, counterproductive and self -assembly of their turn would be.”
📣 Germany is close to turning its principled resistance to mass surveillance and private message scanning and support for the chat control bill. This can end privately – & signal – in the EU.The time is short and they count on obscurity: Let German politicians know how … https://t.co/jkonhcugis6. October 2025
Signal is certainly not alone in feeling that way. Cryptographers, technologists, digital rights experts and even some politicians have long warned against the consequences of such a scan of all citizens’ confidential chats for their privacy and security.
Some European government agencies, including Sweden and the Netherlands, have also considered the insertion of so -called scan on the client side on all units as an unacceptable cyber security risk for national security. Unscreased pressed legislators for chat control to add a provision excl. All governments and military accounts. But obviously the risk is worth all of us.
According to Tiwari, it is ultimately a “smooth slope with global consequences to continue pressing on for mandatory scan regardless of the risk.” What starts with CSAM scanning could expand to terrorism, intellectual properties, and who knows what else. A capacity that can also provide a new and more disturbing way for authoritarian governments to limit the rights of their citizens.
“There are global consequences for building these technological abilities. We should very strongly push back against it, because if it ends up being implemented, we would have crossed a threshold from which I do not think we will be able to come back as a society.”
