In 2021, the EU passed a temporary derogation to it – called Chat Control 1.0 by critics – which allowed email and communication providers to search messages for presence of CSAM.
The purpose of CSAR – called Chat Control 2.0 by critics – is to make it mandatory for service providers to scan messages for CSAM, and to bypass end-to-end encryption.
[7][1] It is claimed this centralization would streamline the process by eliminating the need to send reports to multiple entities and would enable more efficient allocation of resources for investigation and response.
[13] The European Parliament commissioned an additional impact assessment on the proposed regulation which was presented in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs.
According to the Parliament's study, there aren't currently any technological solutions that can detect child sexual abuse material, without resulting in a high error rate which would affect all messages, files and data in a particular platform.
A transnational investigation by European media outlets revealed the close involvement of foreign technology and law enforcement lobbyists in the preparation of the proposal.
[22] Commissioner Johansson was also criticised for the use of micro-targeting techniques to promote its controversial draft proposal, which violated the EU's data protection and privacy rules.
[23] On November 14 2023, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs (LIBE), voted to remove indiscriminate chat control and allow for the targeted surveillance of specific individual and groups which are reasonably suspicious.
[24] In February 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled, in an unrelated case, that requiring degraded end-to-end encryption "cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society".
[26] On 21 June, it was reported that voting on the legislation had been temporarily withdrawn by the EU Council, in a move that is believed to be the result of pushback by critics of the proposal including software vendors.