The EU, an union of 27 countries representing over 450 million people, stands at a crossroads. While the EU has historically championed human rights and democratic values, it’s now on the verge of passing legislation that could fundamentally undermine both. How? The Chat Control regulation threatens to become one of the most dangerous precedents for mass surveillance in democratic history.

And here’s why this matters to everyone, not just EUropeans: when the EU moves, sometimes the world follows. This phenomenon, known as the “Brussels Effect,” has already impacted global standards through regulations like GDPR, which influenced data protection laws from California to Japan to Brazil. If Chat Control passes, it won’t stay confined to Europe. It will spread globally, normalizing mass surveillance as a standard practice.

What is Chat Control?

Chat Control would mandate that all providers of chat, messaging, and email services deploy mass surveillance technology to automatically scan every message, photo, and file you send, without any suspicion of wrongdoing, without a warrant, and even when your communications are supposedly protected by end-to-end encryption.

Think about that for a moment. Every private conversation with your family, every photo you share, every intimate message, every work discussion, every political opinion. All of it would be automatically scanned by AI systems before being encrypted and sent. This would be like having the state read your letters before you seal the envelope, subjecting every EU citizen’s private messages to automated scrutiny.

What is wrong with Chat Control?

Some people use knives to hurt others, but we don’t ban knives, do we? We target the criminals, not the tool. Some people misuse cars, but we don’t prohibit driving, we enforce traffic laws and pursue reckless drivers. Some people exploit the internet for harmful purposes, but the solution isn’t to spy on everyone’s communications. The solution is always targeted investigation of actual suspects with proper judicial oversight.

In addition, Chat Control harms the prosecution of child abuse by flooding investigators with millions of automated reports, most of which are (mathematically) in most cases criminally irrelevant. All citizens are placed under suspicion, without cause, of possibly having committed a crime. This approach doesn’t make children safer, it makes everyone less secure while overwhelming law enforcement with false positives.

Privacy isn’t a privilege! It’s a fundamental human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.” The very foundations of democracy depend on the ability to communicate privately. Journalists need to protect sources, activists need to organize safely, citizens need to express dissent without fear, and everyone deserves intimate conversations without state surveillance.

What We Can Do?

This is a campaign, and campaigns are won through collective action and in solidarity. If you’re an EU citizen, your voice matters more than ever right now. Visit fightchatcontrol.eu today! The webpage makes it easy to contact your EU representatives with just a few clicks. It allows you to select pre-written messages or craft your own, targeting the politicians who will vote on this legislation as early as October 14, 2025. But this fight isn’t limited to EUropeans. Everyone around the world can show solidarity by:

• Using #chatcontrol on Mastodon and other social media;

• Sharing information about the campaign with friends, family, and online communities;

• Supporting privacy-focused organizations and platforms that are resisting mass-surveillance;

• Talk to your own government decission makers and oppose similar measures if Chat Control spreads further outside of EU countries.

The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

The next key dates are September 12, 2025 (Council position finalization) and October 14, 2025 (earliest Council vote). Now is the critical moment for public and stakeholder engagement to protect both children and secure digital infrastructure.

Just like Rome, the surveillance aparatus isn’t built in a day. It’s built one “reasonable” compromise at a time, one “necessary” exception after another, until suddenly we wake up in a world where privacy is a distant memory. Chat Control represents exactly the kind of compromise we cannot afford to make.