- The Chat Control proposal still poses a risk, a group of academics warns
- The open letter comes while the EU Council is meeting
- The bill could be adopted as early as 8 December 2025
Chat control laws “still bring high risks to society without clear benefits for children,” according to an open letter recently published by a group of European academics.
After once again failing to obtain the necessary majority, Denmark has withdrawn the mandatory scanning clause contained in the original Chat Control bill, making it voluntary instead.
The move was initially hailed as a victory by privacy and security experts, but it was short-lived, with people warning that the text could still introduce mandatory scanning”through the back door.”
A group of 18 top cyber security and privacy academics from Europe have echoed these concerns in an open letter published this week.
The letter addressed the European Council two days before the November 19 meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives, and adoption is expected as early as December 8, 2025.
Expanding the scope concerns privacy advocates
Originally, only URLs, images, and videos were supposed to be the target of CSAM scanning. Now, however, lawmakers have expanded the bill’s scope to include text, in a move that echoes earlier versions of the bill.
In their open letter, academics warn that expanding the scope of the legislation will lead to unintended consequences. In particular, they argue that “expanding the scope of detection only opens the door to monitor and investigate a larger portion of conversations, with no guarantee of better protection.”
They also highlight the potential for false positives, writing: “current AI technology is far from accurate enough to undertake these tasks with guarantees of the required level of accuracy.”
Regarding mandatory age verification
The new proposal would also lead to age verification is introduced in app stores and encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp. According to the experts, this not only helps the main purpose of the bill, it also exposes everyone to new privacy and security risks.
“Age estimation cannot be performed in a privacy-preserving manner with current technology due to reliance on biometric, behavioral or contextual information,” they argue. “In fact, it encourages (children’s) data collection and exploitation.”
Experts warn that even using an alternative approach – such as using official documents for age verification – would cut off a “significant part of the population” from essential online services.
What’s more, these provisions would be easy to circumvent. They “can be easily avoided by using non-EU providers or VPNs to avoid geolocation checks,” experts note.
Voluntary discovery is still associated with risks
It appears that switching CSAM scanning from mandatory to voluntary has been enough to achieve bipartisan agreement among lawmakers and end over three years of failed negotiations.
But many cryptography experts and data scientists are still convinced that even voluntary disclosure will harm security and privacy, particularly because of the belief that the technology is currently not accurate or efficient enough.
Overall, “on-device detection technologies cannot be considered a reasonable risk mitigation tool as there is no proven benefit, while the potential for harm and abuse is enormous,” they conclude.
🇪🇺EU governments remove #ChatControl from today’s COREPER agenda because no majority has yet been achieved. For the reasons, see this leaked cable, especially regarding Spain’s demand: pic.twitter.com/poNH2hH8KV19 November 2025
The open letter appears to have already had an impact on today’s meeting.
As a leaked cable shared by former German Pirate Party MEP and digital rights lawyer Patrick Breyer shows, EU governments are removing Chat Control from today’s COREPER agenda because a majority has yet to be achieved.
This could seriously delay the adoption of the new rules, expected as early as December 8, 2025.
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