On Wednesday, May 11, 2022, the EU Commission is expected to publish draft legislation on so-called chat control. The plan is to have an AI-based check of all message content and images directly on our devices. The so-called client-side scanning would be an attack on any confidential communication. The draft plans to examine all communication content directly on our devices and to eject it in case of suspicion. This client-side scanning would not be the first excessive and misguided surveillance method justified by the fight against child abuse. There is no doubt that those affected by child abuse need to be better helped, but chat control is an excessive approach, easy to circumvent and starts at the completely wrong place. Without any expected success in terms of the actual goal, an unprecedented monitoring tool is to be introduced. Completely missed the mark The proposed bill would require every device to scan every message for images of child abuse and contact between criminals and children. If such content is detected in a message, it would be routed out directly to a supervisory authority or the police. Mass scanning not only attacks confidential communications at their very foundations, but would be ineffective to boot: criminals already use distribution channels that would not be affected by these scans and will easily escape scans in the future: The perpetrators use public hosters instead of the messengers targeted by the Commission - not least because messengers are completely unsuitable for exchanging large collections of files. They also encrypt the data before exchanging it. For this reason alone, the planned surveillance will not prevent the further dissemination of abusive images. No trustworthy communication without trustworthy devices Journalists and whistleblowers are not the only ones who depend on trustworthy communication - it is a fundamental right and an important cornerstone of IT security for us all. For communication to be truly trustworthy, two conditions must be met: The device must have integrity and must not leak content to third parties. Encryption must be secure, so that we do not have to trust the network. With the secrecy of telecommunications and the fundamental right to guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of information technology systems, chat control suspends two fundamental rights. Users lose control over what data they share and with whom. They lose basic trust in their own devices. # continued in comments.