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> This means on April 6, 2026, Gmail, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other Big Techs must stop scanning your private messages in the EU
It had already passed and started?
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Of course, remember Apple championed the idea with iMessage scanning which at the time produced A LOT of discussion e.g. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/2021-we-told-apple-don...
Yes, voluntary Chat Control 1.0 has been running since 2021.
Something something constitutional (ish*) rights say you can't do this.
Chat Control 1 says, eh do it anyway if you want on a voluntary and temporary basis until the Courts get around to saying no.
Chat Control 2 says you have to. Until the courts finally get around to striking it down in 15 years.
Gmail and likely others have been scanning at least emails for child pornography since the 2010s.
It was possible on a voluntary basis.
There was an interim legislation that will expire in april.
> It had already passed and started?
Facebook and others have been scanning your private messages for many years already. Then someone discovered that this practice is illegal in Europe. So they passed the temporary chat control 1.0 emergency law to make it legal. The plan was to draft a chat control 2.0 law that would then be the long-term solution. But negotiations took too long and the temporary law will expire on the 4th of April (not the 6th) which means that it will be illegal again for Facebook and others to scan the private messages of European citizens without prior suspicion of any wrongdoing.