Basically, the EU is trying to spy on everyone’s chat messages (SMS, FB Messenger, Signal, you name it). Even if it’s encrypted. (All providers would have to give access through some kind of backdoor in order to be legal in the EU.) As often happens, they are trying to use actual bad things as an excuse to try to overstep and achieve mass surveillance.

Here’s an LLM summary that matches my understanding:

Chat Control is an EU legislative proposal to mandate detection and reporting of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, including requiring clientside scanning for endtoend encrypted services and creating an EU centre to coordinate reports. Critics warn it undermines privacy and encryption, risks false positives and centralisation harms, and its effectiveness and legal proportionality remain hotly disputed.

Germany is trying to stop it now, as people were pushing for. Update from yesterday: German government comes out against Chat Control

Nothing like this in the US yet, but we shouldn’t get complacent.