Chat Control 2025: The EU Privacy Battle That Affects Your Inbox
Understanding the EU's surveillance proposal and what it means for your email privacy.
Every private message you send could soon pass through a digital checkpoint. In late 2025, the European Union moved closer to implementing "Chat Control"—a regulation that, despite recent revisions, still threatens the privacy of over 450 million EU citizens and sets a dangerous precedent for email and messaging surveillance worldwide.
What Is Chat Control?
Chat Control is the informal name for the EU's Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), first proposed in May 2022. The regulation aims to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, but critics argue it creates unprecedented surveillance infrastructure that affects everyone.
The original proposal would have required messaging platforms to scan all private communications—including encrypted ones—using AI systems. Think of it as forcing every postal service to open, photograph, and analyze every letter before delivery.
The November 2025 Turning Point
After years of intense public pressure, something remarkable happened. On November 26, 2025, EU ambassadors approved a revised version that dropped mandatory client side scanning. Encryption will no longer be forcibly broken by providers.
This victory came largely thanks to over 500 cryptography scientists and security researchers who signed an open letter calling Chat Control "technically infeasible" and a "danger to democracy." Their letter, published in September 2025, systematically dismantled the proposal's technical foundations. As they explained, "There is no machine learning algorithm that can detect unknown CSAM without committing a large number of errors."
Germany proved decisive. Europe's largest economy refused to support any measure that would break encryption, drawing a clear line that helped form a blocking minority of nine countries.
The New Threat: Mandatory Age Verification
But privacy advocates aren't celebrating yet. While mandatory scanning was removed, the revised regulation introduces something potentially just as dangerous: mandatory age verification.
Under the new proposal, accessing basic online services—including email and messaging apps—could require submitting government IDs or facial scans. This effectively eliminates online anonymity.
For journalists protecting sources, whistleblowers exposing corruption, activists organizing in hostile environments, and ordinary citizens who simply value their privacy, this represents a fundamental shift in how the internet works.
As MEP Patrick Breyer warns: "Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized."
Why This Matters for Email Users
You might wonder what messaging app legislation has to do with your inbox. The connection is direct and concerning.
The precedent matters. If the EU successfully mandates age verification for messaging apps, email services will face similar pressure. The same surveillance infrastructure being debated for WhatsApp and Signal could easily extend to Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers.
"Voluntary" scanning is already happening. Tech giants like Google and Meta continue to scan communications without being legally required to do so. The Chat Control framework legitimizes and encourages this practice, creating what critics call a "toxic legal framework" that incentivizes mass surveillance.
Client side scanning poses universal risks. Research published in the Journal of Cybersecurity found that such scanning systems have high error rates, frequently returning false results. One father was flagged as a possible child predator after sharing photos of his child with a doctor seeking medical advice. At continental scale, even tiny false positive rates translate into torrents of erroneous alerts—each representing an investigation into innocent communications.
The Technical Reality
Security experts are united in their assessment: you cannot create a "safe" backdoor.
According to the Internet Society, client side scanning "creates serious security and privacy risks for all society while the assistance it can provide for law enforcement is at best problematic." The same methods implemented to detect illegal content can be repurposed for mass surveillance.
The scientists' open letter confirmed that "any form of scanning inherently undermines the protections that end to end encryption is designed to guarantee." It creates a vulnerability on every device—one that hackers, authoritarian governments, or malicious actors could exploit.
Signal, Proton, and Threema have all stated they would leave the EU market rather than compromise encryption. That should tell you everything about the stakes involved.
What Happens Next
The first trilogue negotiation on the revised proposal took place on December 9, 2025. Denmark's EU presidency ends December 31, with Poland taking over in January 2026—just months before current voluntary scanning provisions would expire in April 2026.
A leaked German government memo reveals that the Council's own lawyers believe this draft law violates fundamental rights and is unlikely to survive legal challenges. The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that degrading encryption "cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society."
The battle continues. Privacy advocates urge citizens to contact their MEPs through resources like fightchatcontrol.eu.
Protecting Your Privacy Today
While legislative battles unfold, you can take immediate action to protect your communications:
Start with your inbox. Email tracking is already pervasive—spy pixels and click trackers monitor when you open messages, where you are, and what device you're using. Tools like Gblock for Gmail block these trackers automatically, giving you immediate privacy protection regardless of what regulations pass.
Stay informed. Follow developments through organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and European Digital Rights (EDRi), which have documented over 69 opposing voices to Chat Control.
Make your voice heard. Democratic pressure works. The defeat of mandatory scanning proves that citizen engagement can influence outcomes.
The Bottom Line
Chat Control represents a critical moment for digital privacy. While the removal of mandatory encryption breaking is a genuine victory, mandatory age verification and "voluntary" surveillance frameworks continue to threaten online privacy.
The broader lesson is clear: governments worldwide are pushing for access to private communications. Whether through direct mandates or indirect pressure, the encryption and privacy protections we take for granted are under sustained attack.
Your inbox is worth protecting. Start by blocking the trackers already there, and stay vigilant about the larger battles that will determine the future of private communication.
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