Overview
- The Parliament provisionally revived a temporary exception that would let companies voluntarily scan private communications for known child sexual abuse material after a contested vote on Thursday that used an expedited procedure.
- Lawmakers adopted three key limits: the rules must not apply to end-to-end encrypted content, scans must target only known illegal material, and a human must verify any automated match before firms pass suspicions to authorities.
- The emergency process was pushed by the European People’s Party and Parliament President Roberta Metsola and drew sharp criticism because stopping the measure would have required an absolute majority of all MEPs, which was not reached.
- An EU Commission evaluation cited in coverage found extremely low yields from past scanning—about 0.00000077 percent of scanned items in the EU were illegal—and reported false-positive rates up to roughly 20 percent, raising questions about effectiveness and error-driven harms.
- Next steps are a formal Commission opinion and Council approval before the exception can take effect, while separate talks on a permanent ‘Chatkontrolle 2.0’ law continue and keep alive technical and security disputes over client-side scanning and encryption risks.