Vitalik Buterin Breaks Silence on EU Chat Control Proposal

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin finally has something to say about the European Union’s push for chat control on social media platforms.

Vitalik Buterin Sees a More Challenging Privacy Preservation Era

Vitalik Buterin acknowledged the rejection of the EU chat control proposal titled Chat Control 2.0, stating that it feels like a significant win.

He expressed his gratitude towards the effort of different entities who ensured that the proposal does not see the light of day. Consequently, Buterin congratulated Europeans on their latest win against the authorities. In a follow-up post, the Ethereum executive highlighted the fact that this may not mark the end of such legislation that threatens citizens’ privacy.

Rather, Buterin believes that this is the beginning of a challenging era for privacy preservation. To give perspective to Buterin’s post, here is a background story.

Recent news of EU chat control proposals failing feels like a significant win. Really grateful to see so many people working hard to make this outcome happen, and congratulations to Europeans. https://t.co/61QHsBdib2

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 6, 2024

Apart from the Market in Crypto Asset (MiCA) regulatory framework, EU member states pushed forward a proposal to mass scan private communication on encrypted messaging platform like Whatsapp and Signal. This would involve scanning videos, images and URL sent on these platforms in search of incriminating materials. The process will be performed by an Artificial Intelligence-powered algorithm against a government database of known abuse material.

The aim was to mitigate the occurrence of child security abuse via these social media platforms.

Noteworthy, the legislation had to pass through the Council of the EU, one of the two legislative bodies. From here, it will head to the next legislative stage. At the time, several privacy advocates including operators of the encrypted messaging platforms argued against the proposal. Some went as far as likening it to the mass surveillance of George Orwell’s 1984.

EU Chat Control 2.0 Proposal Faces Criticism 

Industry key players criticized the idea of the proposal. They cited its misalignment with end-to-end encryption, which ensures that messages can be read only by the sender and the intended recipient.

Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal foundation stated that in the past, experts have made it clear that there is no way to preserve both the integrity of end-to-end encryption and expose encrypted contents to surveillance. Notwithstanding, proposal to do this exact preservation has repeatedly showed up.

A “Don’t Scan Me” petition was released and it received many signatures. Their efforts did not go to waste as the sponsors of the proposal ended up withdrawing it.

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