EU Council Rebrands Mass Chat Scanning as Search Plans
Surveillance control · 28.09.2026

The EU Council has found a new word for an old idea. Mass scanning of private messages is now called "search plans" — sounds almost harmless. In reality, ahead of decisive negotiations on the regulation against child sexual abuse, leaked documents show that member states want to entrench permanent chat scanning under a new label.

The scheme works like this: national authorities would get the power to issue providers of chat and email services with temporary but mass permits to scan message content. The Council insists the new law must not offer fewer capabilities than the current "voluntary" scanning by Facebook, Google, and others.

Former MEP Patrick Breyer calls this a relabeling of mass surveillance: millions of innocent users will keep being scanned without any suspicion. His comparison is apt — it's like desperately mopping the floor without turning off the tap.

Meanwhile, the Council's own legal service had already warned earlier that scanning an entire service is highly likely to violate EU law and would be ruled by the European Court of Justice as indiscriminate mass surveillance. In other words, the Council is pushing a plan that its own lawyers consider doomed in Luxembourg from the start.

There's also a plan B in case negotiations fail: simply exclude private chats from the regulation altogether. In that case, the "temporary" system of voluntary scanning would remain forever as a loophole — temporary becoming permanent, just under a different name.

Breyer points out that about 75% of messages flagged by algorithms have nothing to do with actual crimes. In Germany, a significant share of child pornography investigations target teenagers themselves — over ordinary consensual sexting between peers. Investigators' resources are spent on false positives instead of real cases.

The European Parliament still holds a different position: targeted warrants under judicial oversight in cases of specific suspicion, rather than blanket scanning of everyone.

Source: https://www.heise.de/news/Chatkontrolle-EU-Staaten-wollen-umfassende-Massenscans-per-Umweg-legalisieren-11468633.html