The defeat is crucial for several reasons: - statistics show high false-positive rates in automated CSAM detection. This means innocent people would have been flagged, and authorities would have accessed countless private communications with no criminal content; - creating backdoors in encryption doesn't just help law enforcement; it creates vulnerabilities that hackers and hostile nation states could exploit. Government and military communications were notably exempted from the proposal, highlighting that even lawmakers understood the security risks; - a coalition of over 45,000 European businesses warned the law would destroy user trust and harm Europe's digital sovereignty, placing impossible financial burdens on smaller companies while giving Big Tech an advantage.

Mass surveillance cannot protect children. Real protection requires targeted law enforcement, better platform accountability, education, and resources for identifying actual abusers, and not scanning billions of innocent messages in hopes of finding needles in haystacks. This victory proves that citizen protest works. Hundreds of cryptography experts, digital rights organizations, and millions of concerned Europeans made their voices heard. But vigilance remains essential. Europe must find the political will to pursue policies that actually work.

Chat Control. It's in the very name, this time there's no doubt about.