The organisation Students For Liberty Malta has launched a parliamentary petition urging the government and Malta’s representatives in Brussels to oppose the EU’s controversial ‘Chat Control’ proposal, which would mandate the scanning of private digital communications. The petition argues that the proposal undermines the fundamental right to privacy, weakens digital security and sets a dangerous precedent for mass surveillance across the EU. The regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse, also known as ‘Chat Control’, was proposed in 2022 by European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson. The aim of the legislation is to prevent child sexual abuse online through the implementation of a number of measures, including the establishment of a framework that would make the detection and reporting of child sexual abuse material by digital platforms a legal requirement within the EU. Students For Liberty Malta has already started collecting signatures from the university and six schools and will continue collecting from all over Malta and Gozo.