Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and a couple more Hollywood celebrities united under an "NGO" called Thorn(.org).

That "NGO" also happens to sell a tool called Safer(.io) that allows website owners to check hashes against known CSAM material, which I'm sure is unrelated.

They also happened to have shadily employed some former high-ranking Europol officials, which is again just a pure coincidence.

Balkan Insight did wonderful investigative reporting on them a couple of years back: https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...

There is a nascent AI industry trying to sell their surveillance tech to governments.

Most of all this noise is just the product of the drawn out legislative process of the EU, the commission included chat control in a larger package suggested ca 2021 and it's been working itself through the system since then, generating headlines every few months.

By now it's just too late to take it back and start over without including chat control.

> Who wants this?

FAANG, various 3 letter agencies.

> Who is driving it?

FAANG lobbists. Stupid politicians who think they can only use it on adversaries.

The ultimate goal is to make anonymous speech online seem shady and suspicious (only trust thoughts from certified citizen accounts) and to make people more cautious about what they write online. Politicians are really tired of being mocked by anonymous people immune to being shamed with the help of the fourth estate (press). This legislation is one piece of the puzzle.

The people pushing this come from the usual power centers in European politics, the (current) centrists. They feel motivated to protect their positions against encroachments from what they consider extremist positions (be it e.g. economic left or right, or a or b on some other scale.)

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