Many European Lawmakers Voted Against Allowing Big Tech to Read Our Messages. They’re Going Anyway

European Parliament has voted to extend laws allowing tech companies to voluntarily analyze the private messages of users who are involved in child abuse cases, even though most lawmakers voted against the idea.

The decision reinstates the licenses of businesses including Meta, Google, and Microsoft to monitor private texts, emails, and social media messages through a bill dubbed “Chat Control” by critics. End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp and Signal, remain useless.

“It means that private companies can deny you your right to have a private digital conversation,” Simeon de Brouwer, a policy advisor at the Brussels-based advocacy group European Digital Rights, tells WIRED. “They can, if they want to, read every message you write, every email you send, every photo you share.”

The European People’s Party, the largest political group in the European Parliament, has been fighting to restore the legal framework for technology companies to record communications since the old law expired in April. Members say the company’s detection services have helped identify and rescue victims of cyberbullying, and banning them leaves children vulnerable. They have been scrambling to get the bill back before parliament breaks up for its summer recess at the end of the month.

“We cannot go to the summer holidays knowing that our children will not be protected,” party vice-chairman Tomas Tobé told lawmakers earlier in the week.

But the meaning of secrecy means that the law has faced fierce opposition from other parties and human rights activists. The EPP party used pressure to push for a fresh vote on the law this week after negotiations ended in March. This “fast track” bypasses the initial committee debates where amendments would have been announced and states that the law will only be passed if a majority of 361 MEPs vote against it.

While more members of the European Parliament voted against the law on Thursday than they voted for, it failed with 47 votes. Technology companies will now have the right to analyze messages to find child abuse until 2028, or until a permanent law – which is already being discussed called “Chat Control” by opponents – takes its place.

Human rights activist and former MEP Patrick Breyer called the decision a “disaster” that “destroys democracy.”

“Our children are the real losers in this undemocratic system,” he said blog post and Breyer. “Trying to protect children without questioning them is like scrubbing the floor with difficulty when a bomb is going off.”