Saxony's Interior Minister Proposes Expanding Chat Control Scope

• Armin Schuster, the Interior Minister of Saxony, is calling for the expansion of EU chat control measures to cover crimes beyond child sexual abuse.
• The proposal suggests applying these tools to counter-terrorism, extremist structure investigation, and other serious criminal offenses.
• Schuster advocates that these measures should be conditional, targeting specific suspects under judicial oversight rather than indiscriminate scanning.

Status of EU Chat Control

• Initial European Commission plans to mandate automated scanning of all encrypted communication were largely averted, as they threatened the viability of end-to-end encryption.
• Negotiations are currently ongoing within the trilogue process involving the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council.

Opposition and Expert Concerns

• Civil rights groups have consistently warned that such regulations create a "gateway" for broader state surveillance, commonly referred to as function creep.
• During a recent hearing in the Saxon state parliament, all participating experts rejected both general chat control and the implementation of client-side scanning.
• Experts explicitly labeled the voluntary chat control measures previously passed by the European Parliament as violations of fundamental rights.