CC BY-SA 3.0 I, Friman
Below, we relay the unanimous position of the hosting providers of the CHATONS collective, of which we are a member, calling for the cancellation of the “ChatControl” bill.
Starting on October 14, 2025, the European Council will examine a proposed law that will impose—under the laudable pretext of child protection—indiscriminate mass surveillance of all our digital communications: emails, chat rooms, photos, etc.
This proposal, known as the “Regulation on Combating Sexual Abuse of Children” (CSAR) or “ChatControl,” is the latest in a long line of attempts to undermine the fundamental right to privacy of the entire population, and will not solve any of the problems it is supposed to address.
Indeed, even though the implementation details have not yet been finalized, discussions begun in 2020 envisaged requiring digital communication service providers to implement technologies for the systematic “analysis” of all communications as soon as they are published.
Analyzing all communications necessarily requires reading them all, whether sealed or not, which essentially contravenes the principle of confidentiality of communications, an essential prerequisite for the right to privacy and freedom of expression. If the seals are broken by a robot whose functioning and potential actors are unknown, rather than by a human being, the seal of secrecy of communication is still systematically destroyed.
Despite clear recommendations from the Human Rights Defender to prioritize targeted actions for child protection, France supports this project with uncertain positive effects, setting up a mass surveillance infrastructure that, as European history has shown, can easily be misused to the detriment of society as a whole.
Many IT security specialists are warning of the serious consequences of this project for the security of millions of users and businesses that require secure means of communication [CEPIS]. The protection of children, while highly legitimate, does not justify the concessions being considered.
Open source technologies enable citizens, businesses, communities, and administrations to build information systems based on transparency, user freedom, technological choice, and control over tools and data. The collaborations that emerge from these open source technologies foster chains of trust between community members and users.
However, this bill would make it mandatory to deploy black box software components whose functioning cannot be validated by these communities. This effectively impacts our ability to offer our users free, ethical services that respect their privacy, and directly affects our ability to provide healthy alternatives to large, predatory international corporations.
We therefore call for this bill to be reviewed and significantly amended in terms of its implications for digital technologies, in line with the values and interests of the European Union.
Given the serious consequences that ChatControl would have on our democratic societies, our CHATONS collective is firmly opposed to this text. We invite you to contact your European representative, your local media, but also—and above all—to share this text and talk about it with those around you. Preserving our achievements also requires raising awareness and discussing the issue with our loved ones, so that this important topic is not relegated to the back page of a newspaper and forgotten tomorrow.
Notes, links, and references
- The proposed law
- Proposal by the défenseuse des droits: Child protection (FR)
- CEPIS position: A right to secure communication and effective encryption for Europe
- European information site on ChatControl
- French information site about ChatControl (FR)
- Press release from the Pirate Party France (FR)
- Press release from La Quadrature du Net (FR)
- FDN CHAT CONTROL is back (FR)
This is an automated translation of the french press released voted by the Collective of Alternative, Transparent, Open, Neutral, and Supportive Hosting Providers on September 8, 2025
About the CHATONS collective and Alsace Réseau Neutre
Alsace Réseau Neutre is a non-profit association that can be seen as a digital AMAP (Association for the Preservation of Small Farming), working together to build a utopian corner of the internet. ARN offers numerous alternative online services, as well as fiber optic internet access. Press area
CHATONS – kittens in french – is the Collective of Hosters Alternative, Transparent, Open, Neutral and Solidarity. This collective aims to bring together structures offering free, ethical and decentralised online services in order to allow users to quickly find alternatives that respect their data and privacy to the services offered by GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft).