Today, the 9th of Juli 2026, a minority of the European Parliament abused the rules to ensure that ‘Chat Control 1.0’ is back in force.
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what remains the same:
- What’s coming back: US tech companies are once again permitted to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
- What stays the same: Public social media posts and files stored in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Moreover, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
- What’s still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
Patrick Breyer sums up the problem
As long as EU governments can use procedural loopholes to continually extend their comfortable status quo of voluntary, indiscriminate mass scanning, they have zero incentive to engage with the Parliament’s targeted, legally sound, and far more effective child protection strategy.
A motion that was submitted to parliament to reject (amended) Regulation (EU) 2021/1232 did not make it, and the weakening of the ePrivacy Directive is again a fact.
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