Millions of private chats and private photos of innocent citizens are to be searched using unreliable technology and then leaked without the affected chat users being even remotely connected to child sexual abuse – this would destroy our digital privacy of correspondence. Our nude photos and family photos would end up with strangers in whose hands they do not belong and with whom they are not safe. Despite lip service being paid to encryption, client-side scanning would undermine previously secure end-to-end encryption in order to turn our smartphones into spies – this would destroy secure encryption.

I am alarmed that EU governments that have been critical so far are praising the repackaged plans, which threatens to overturn the previous blocking minority. Not even a written opinion from the Council’s legal service on this obvious violation of fundamental rights has yet been requested. If the EU governments really do go into the trilogue negotiations with this radical position of indiscriminate chat control scanning, experience shows that the Parliament risks gradually abandoning its initial position behind closed doors and agreeing to bad and dangerous compromises that put our online security at risk.

Now is the time to take to the barricades for privacy and secure encryption!’