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European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids
- this_is_eline 4y agoNothing new. People in general prefer giving up their privacy for 'safety'.
- coldtea 4y agoIf that was the tradeoff, it would be worth it. This is giving up their privacy for nothing in return, or worse, negative restrictions on their political freedom and freedom of expression.
- pc86 4y agoSpeak for yourself. Privacy and freedom are more important than security to many, many people.
- coldtea 4y agoSounds good, doesn't work. Security and freedom are "platonic" ideals. None of those exists in the abstract, as a real world thing, and you can't find one without the other in the wild (in a Disney-like world, maybe, but not in the real world, in the presense of others, that is people that want to deprive you of either/both, and can benefit from doing so). Trivially speaking, if some thugs can just come and beat you with no police or legal resources available to you, you don't have either pricacy or security. Both are at their mercy. You could of course defend yourself, but then you're still getting your freedom through security: it's just that in this case you're obligated to cater get that security on your own. So, we trade some freedom (giving state the ability to enforce laws, have police) in excange for security. And vice versa. But in any case, my point above was different: that what TFA descrives is not a tradeoff between privacy and security, it is giving up privacy for no real benefit. If anything, losing encryption costs in both privacy AND security.
- jaywalk 4y agoWhen people say "privacy and freedom are more important than security" it's in regards to privacy and freedom being curtailed by the government in order for the government to provide security. Don't be absurd.
- pc86 4y agoYou can't argument that security trumps privacy and/or freedom without being absurd, so it's kind of expected.
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoPrivacy is a form of security though (security for your own thoughts and actions in the own home, and in, on, and near your person). At the very least it is a domain that strongly overlaps with security. And good security is what gives you the safety to be free. If you want to sacrifice freedom for security, you might end up putting the cart before the horse. And of course sacrificing privacy for security is at best balancing 2 different kinds of security. You're not necessarily gaining security. In this case it means that there's no guarantee that children will actually netto be safer if people can scan private communications.
- jotm 4y agoThey'll give it up for convenience or a dollar, too.
- seydor 4y agoThe four horsemen strike again. I think i 'll let this one pass. People should be inconvenienced enough to learn to use uncensorable platforms.
- Ambolia 4y agoYes, at this point of the internet, the fact that most people have decided to depend on big platforms and not develop properly all the distributed alternatives available for many years, it's hard to blame anybody except ourselves.
- fithisux 4y agoI'm interested though. Any starter guide?
- Ambolia 4y agoWell, there's nothing properly developed, that's why we are still here. The basic building blocks are all there, cryptography for privacy and identity. p2p networks for data transfer have worked in the piracy world for many years too. What is missing is putting it all together and be able to replicate the network effects you get from centralized media, like if you are able to reach one person, be able to reach in a simple way all of his friends as well (supposing they want to be reached).
- boredumb 4y agoNow that covid is waning, we're back to 'the kids' in order to allow governments absurd amounts of power over individuals. None of these excuses are put forth in order to further the argument, it's to create a trap for detractors and be able to label them as evil people, killing grandma, hating kids, supporting terror, etc etc.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- trasz 4y agoWe have a perfectly good war though.
- unethical_ban 4y agoJust for the record, one can believe in Covid restrictions of 2020 and also believe this CSAM action is absurd and anti-privacy. Equating them is shallow at best and misleading at worst.
- boredumb 4y agoOne can believe in covid restrictions, but they would be naive if they think there wasn't a huge cost imposed on individuals and it's not immediately obvious that more restrictions meant less disease. Dismissing governments ability to utilize fear in order to enact powers they previously didn't hold, just because one fear is something held more dearly is how all of these things pass. Child abuse and covid are both real and both are and were used to give government power that most free societies would reject outright and without further question if neither existed.
- hoseja 4y agoCOVID was unknown. It's perfectly reasonable to shut things down when there's an unknown disease going around, even if it turns out not quite apocalyptic.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
- harabat 4y agoRelated from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 (300 comments)
- sysadm1n 4y ago> And it becomes obvious that child abuse websites stay up longer Versus > That is to enable the new agency to undermine end-to-end encryption by mandating client-side scanning This article needs to be clear about what these agencies are after: E2E encrypted messaging apps, or 'websites'. Because a messaging app is not a 'website'.
- jdthedisciple 4y agoThe way I understood it is: both I might be totally mistaken though.
- hkwerf 4y agoIt's even worse. In Germany, police and agencies responsible to prosecute pedophiles that are active on those websites supposedly do not take those websites down, even after they gained control, at least in some cases. > In German: https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2021/Kindesmissbrauch-Warum-loescht-die-Polizei-die-Bilder-nicht,kindesmissbrauch396.html https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2021/Kindesmissbrauc... I remember another article, which I can't find right now, with an interview, where a spokesperson explicitly said that taking down the sites is not their responsibility.
- alaricus 4y ago"Protecting kids" is a load of nonsense. It's just a convenient excuse and sounds much better than "we want to read your private stuff".
- fsckboy 4y agothe headline is horribly biased (could we change it to "think of the children!"?) but it seems to me if you want to protect children from pedos that you would need to read both of their email, so I don't understand how breaking privacy threatens children.
- cors-fls 4y agoMandating that the takedown go through this agency means states won't be able to hire private companies specialising in takedowns (and faster). Takedowns take way longer, which hurts the children.
- andai 4y ago>We found that the specialist contractors who take down phishing websites for banks would typically take six hours to remove an offending website, while the Internet Watch Foundation – which has a legal monopoly on taking down child-abuse material in the UK – would often take six weeks. [...] >So it’s really stupid for the European Commission to mandate centralised takedown by a police agency for the whole of Europe. This will be make everything really hard to fix once they find out that it doesn’t work, and it becomes obvious that child abuse websites stay up longer, causing real harm.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> which has a legal monopoly on taking down child-abuse material in the UK So basically a pr stunt from those who left the EU to feel better about themselves?
- baud147258 4y agoI would have though that in most (all?) EU countries, there's already laws in place to allow law enforcement to read private correspondence of suspects. From my reading, this law would also "allow the widespread scanning of people’s private communications" (from an article linked in the post https://edri.org/our-work/european-commissions-online-csam-proposal-fails-to-find-right-solutions-to-tackle-child-sexual-abuse/ https://edri.org/our-work/european-commissions-online-csam-p...), so not necessarily limited to suspects
- work_ta_220503 4y agoI'd love to know what percentage of those CSAM numbers are inflated by 14-17 yrs old sharing their own pictures (and their SOs leaking to someone else w/o permission) versus what most of the people imagine when government yells "CP!!!"
- breakfastduck 4y ago70-80% total is the suggested inflation, my guess on that.
- zx85wes 4y agoI think that's a very conservative estimation.
- judge2020 4y agoNot the same metric, but related: > Approximately 200,000 people in 38 states are currently on the sex offender registry for crimes they committed as children. Some were put on the registry when they were as young as eight years old. https://jlc.org/issues/juvenile-sex-offender-registry-sorna https://jlc.org/issues/juvenile-sex-offender-registry-sorna
- jotm 4y agoOh no, I saw myself naked in the mirror so many times as a kid!
- dijit 4y agoJust so you’re aware. That is actually illegal and those teens sending pictures to other teens can (and are) prosecuted.
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoThis might not be universally true soon. The Netherlands proposed changing the law so teens are okay sexting one another as long as there is mutual consent and it's not to make money[0]. However, it has been stalled for a few years now. (I initially thought it was accepted, but now things are forecasted to be 2024). I also suspect that despite it being illegal, very little action is undertaken while the above requirements are still met. I do not know about other EU countries. [0]: https://www.mediawijsheid.nl/veelgestelde-vraag/is-sexting-strafbaar/ https://www.mediawijsheid.nl/veelgestelde-vraag/is-sexting-s... (Dutch)
- Syonyk 4y agohttps://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/system/files/2022-05/Proposal%20for%20a%20Regulation%20laying%20down%20rules%20to%20prevent%20and%20combat%20child%20sexual%20abuse_en_0.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/system/files/2022-05/Propo... This contains the text of the requirements. Search for "Grooming" and you'll find some particularly horrifying chunks regarding "scanning of conversations for content." Plus, not only known existing CSAM, but also identifying new material. Because don't you trust machine learning that can't tell the difference between a cat and a ferret to know what is and isn't CSAM? That's a very real path to "You have a photo of your child in the bathtub and the police smash down your door." I like this bit, though: > The processing of users’ personal data for the purposes of detecting, reporting and removing online child sexual abuse has a significant impact on users’ rights and can be justified only in view of the importance of preventing and combating online child sexual abuse.
- breakfastduck 4y agoWhy do you like that? They can focus on ONE justification which is 'acceptable'. But one justification is all they need. They don't need more than one for total access.
- Syonyk 4y agoJust the brazen "Yeah, privacy and stuff are important, But the Children!" phrasing of it. They're not even trying to pretend it's anything but an excuse anymore.
- sharken 4y agoThis is no different from the outrage with Apple and client-side scanning of your device. Yes, we should absolutely do everything we can to protect the children. But losing our privacy is not and can never be an acceptable course of action. There is a frighteningly short distance from giving up privacy due to CSAM, to a full-blown surveillance state.
- 4y ago
- pyuser583 4y agoBecause of course the EU wants a centralized EU-wide approach.
- cleandreams 4y ago
- DontMindit 4y agoWe will soon have robot dogs patrolling our streets and barking at us while we scream in anguish out of our windows for food if this becomes law. Any rebellion or resistance will become impossible forever once we cant communicate in private. You do realise this?
- SamPatt 4y agoThis is not about efficiency. This is about trust. We do not trust these enormous organizations we call governments with unlimited power, because they then become a threat to society itself. The 20th century is evidence of the threat of centralized power, particularly over the control of information and communication. So when a government claims the power to read all conversations in order to prevent X from happening, X is irrelevant. I don't even care to hear their justification. They cannot be given this power. It's an existential threat to a free society.
- exabrial 4y ago> to protecting kids Let's be clear, this has nothing to do with protecting kids and everything with backdoors. The idea here is that anyone that opposes this can be easily accused of being a child molestor.
- j_san 4y agoI very opposed to the proposal of the commission - in fact I even went to a demonstration today against it. It's a horrible privacy invasion and very bad in many different ways, but... But I think your take is not true. I can imagine that it might just be a really misinformed proposal to actually go against child abuse. I hope.
- kingcharles 4y agoI think the poster above you is right, though. If you demonstrate against it, it is easy for someone to just say "Hey everyone, this person is for kids getting raped."
- HL33tibCe7 4y agoThe EU is honestly just so awful when it comes to anything relating to technology. The number of insane proposals I’ve seen from them over the years… It’s like they’ve got the worst political takes on tech from each EU country and smushed them together into a big ball of awfulness.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> The EU is honestly just so awful when it comes to anything relating to technology and yet all the scandals about breaking the privacy of users for profit or worse didn't come from EU. Maybe they are not that wrong...
- martimarkov 4y ago[flagged]
- thenaturalist 4y agoCare to share some details? When it comes to privacy invasion the EU has been a champion in curbing massively intrusive corporate practices for years now. Some of it is awful yes, but other high visibility projects have been amazing. I'm glad to be European when I look at the insanity that is the American tracking and personal data brokers industry. I recommend a recent John Oliver on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqn3gR1WTcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqn3gR1WTcA
- boppo1 4y agoSo private entities can't snoop on me, just thee government?
- peoplefromibiza 4y agohell yes! Government is a body of elected people, by the people. And it's subject to the people's scrutiny!
- 4y ago
- davidkunz 4y agoAlways the same argument to open doors for mass surveillance. https://youtu.be/RybNI0KB1bg https://youtu.be/RybNI0KB1bg
- ephbit 4y agoTotally off topic ... I am to a certain degree curious what video hides behind this link. Maybe I'd even want to watch it. But at the same time I am too turned off by the fact that I'd actually need to visit the link just to learn the title of this video to actually do the click. Ever felt the same?
- rad_gruchalski 4y agoThe title is: The Simpsons - Helen Lovejoy - Think of the children
- ephbit 4y agoAwesome .. I'll totally click on that link now.
- 0x_rs 4y ago>Finally, the proposed Regulation contains safeguards to ensure that technologies used for the purposes of detection, reporting and removal of online child sexual abuse to comply with a detection order are the least privacy-intrusive and are in accordance with the state of the art in the industry; they perform any necessary review on an anonymous basis and only take steps to identify any user in case potential online child sexual abuse is detected. It guarantees the fundamental right to an effective remedy in all phases of the relevant activities, from detection to removal, and it limits the preservation of removed material and related data to what is strictly necessary for certain specified purposes. Thereby, the proposed Regulation limits the interference with the right to personal data protection of users and their right to confidentiality of communications, to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of ensuring the achievement of its objectives, that is, laying down harmonised rules for effectively preventing and combating online child sexual abuse in the internal market. (from the proposal) It doesn't seem to me the document goes very much into detail on the effects this will cause for privacy rights, both with its application and indirectly, and how it should be implemented, despite briefly bringing up encryption concerns from the opposition. I can't see this anonymized data collection work as claimed due to the sensitive nature of the subject at hand (private conversations), and I wonder about the enforcement rights it'd allow (imposition of "remedies", fines, periodic penalty payments, and "power to adopt interim measures to avoid the risk of serious harm") and the importance of rapid content deletion for small-to-medium online platforms and personal sites as it has been hinted in the past. I really do not trust companies to have a privacy minded approach nor I consider my government capable of doing so as it does not benefit it in practice. (the document does mention strong support from "law enforcement authorities")
- nomendos 4y ago"protecting kids" is a "way of the devil" done by weak bureaucrats towards creating tools for totalitarian control, as government can and should not be trusted with anything proactive or en mass!
- grnmamba 4y agoThis is the true face of the EU. Anyone who opposes it will be branded as a child molester. Even if the parliament rejects this proposal, the next power hungry authoritarian can simply try again, until eventually one parliament will pass it. You can be either in support of total surveillance, or in support of abolishing the EU. There is no middle ground.
- AlbertoGP 4y ago> Even if the parliament rejects this proposal, the next power hungry authoritarian can simply try again, until eventually one parliament will pass it. Indeed, in the words of the previous President of the European Commission: “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker#1999 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker#1999 The current President of the European Commission has been a long time advocate for Internet control: “However, in the digital community, her posturing for the EU’s top job has caused concern. In 2000, when Von Der Leyen was Families minister, she advocated for the mandatory blocking of child pornography online via a list of offending websites managed by police authorities. Germany’s Pirate Party claimed that the law would lead to censorship of the internet.” “The outcry that resulted was dubbed the ‘Zensursula’ scandal, blending the German word for censorship (“Zensur”) and her name (“Ursula”). The move was eventually repealed after it being challenged broadly, including a petition that had garnered tens of thousands of signatures.” https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/digital-brief-von-der-leyens-censorship-worries/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/digital-brief-...
- hkwerf 4y agoI can finally wear my Zensursula t-shirt again! https://www.getdigital.de/zensursula.html https://www.getdigital.de/zensursula.html
- q-big 4y agoRelevant for the readers who are somewhat fluent in German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4vbdusj7Pk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4vbdusj7Pk
- AlexanderTheGr8 4y agoDoes anyone know why the EU is doing this? Everyone knows that the children thing is a pathetic excuse, but why do they want surveillance? I highly doubt that messaging is a big risk to EU stability. So why make such an effort?
- pas 4y agoit's the same as the abortion issue. there are a lot of people who honestly sincerely earnestly believe in it. then there are those who share this belief but see it as part of something bigger. this last group is the fucking fascist small dick energy idiots, who believe in order based on a hierarchy of people, classes, races, countries, etc...
- Geee 4y agoIt seems that EU is pushing for China-style surveillance economy. Not sure who is behind it really, and it's starting to feel quite shady. No one really cares about EU, because it's supposed to be benign.
- petre 4y agoThink of the kids is just another excuse to break privacy now that terrorism and covid aren't interesting anymore. I wonder what's gonna be next? Russian propaganda and fake news?
- b-x 4y agoTheir true motives are far from protecting kids. Otherwise, they would install security cameras inside all corners in all churches in the continent, and, more importantly, enforce bodycam on pastors 24/7.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> cameras inside all corners in all churches in the continent, Because that's how you protect people privacy, right??? Why not put military personnel in every corner of every street and check if people have the "approved by the government" tattoo on their wrists?
- b-x 4y ago> Because that's how you protect people privacy, right??? I'm not promoting such practices. In fact, I was just trying to use the legislators logic: if they are truthful about their "protecting children" slogan, let them start their policing where the predators are most likely to be found instead of targeting the entire population.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> if they are truthful about their "protecting children" slogan, they would try to solve it as they see fit. legislators are voted by the people, with many different ideas. they aren't a caste disconnected by the rest of the World. especially in EU institutions where is much harder to make a career over lobbying for some local interest. Worst politicians in Europe work in national parliaments. > let them start their policing where the predators are You mean in their houses, where the vast majority of the abuses take place? Please, don't post simplistic vox populi stuff.
- b-x 4y ago> they would try to solve it as they see fit. It seems for them the solution is to destroy privacy for the entire population. > Please, don't post simplistic vox populi stuff. Please ask this to the European Commision instead.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoCambridge is not EU anymore. They should focus on their country. https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/uk-tells-messaging-apps-not-to-use-e2e-encryption-for-kids-accounts/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/uk-tells-messaging-apps-no...
- a-dub 4y agorather than playing all these games later trying to catch and track it, i can't help but wonder if it could be better halted by training kids early on when and how to get help to stop it before it's produced. otherwise it seems it will just be this technological cat and mouse game that destroys privacy rights and empowers bad actors to plant it maliciously (swatting 2.0).
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoAt least for The Netherlands, this is what used to happen (and I still hope it is). School educated on various topics regarding power dynamics in relationships and the problems that can spawn forth from it. Of course, some teens are going to get tempted and do stupid things either way. Imagine the least innocent thing you know about your peers back in those days, many will have likely been tempted to go off the deeper end in some way. It's difficult to give children safety and privacy when they actively seek to dare themselves and one another, not heed warnings, etc.
- a-dub 4y agowait, what? they taught children pedagogically about how not to be manipulated or controlled in a general sense? what an incredibly enlightened idea! was it any good? did it work?
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoI suspect it worked in the sense that some teens took precautions. I don't believe my classmates had anything bad happen to them, but a fair few of them definitely put themselves into situations that could have been bad if the other party was a little more malicious (power imbalance, blackmail, nudes spread, etc.) I also suspect that what I heard was only the tip of the iceberg of their actual experimentations. Like I said, some teens are still going to do stupid stuff despite being warned. It's difficult to give them both autonomy, security and privacy when they won't heed warnings. I like to believe not invading their privacy and simply teaching them is enough, but some others might feel the EU's need to be a universal helicopter parent to be justified when the consequences are too high.
- rapht 4y agoAs usual, the solution lies in peer-to-peer apps where there is no centralized provider that will have any responsibility or oversight. Wait... isn't that what infringers already use?
- easrng 4y agoAs a minor who has been messaged a few times people wanting nudes, some of them ask for instagram or snapchat usernames (are they trying to get caught??) and some of them ask for wickr (which does seem to be e2ee, so less stupid of them). I haven't seen any others, but this hasn't happened many times.
- hexo 4y agoIn our country, privacy is protected by constitution.
- aasasd 4y agoSo Apple's snooping initiative produced exactly the result that was predicted? The article doesn't quite expand on this, but it sounds like the lawmakers and the agency are jolly happy to push their own variant of client-side scanning on everyone. The whole story with client-side scanning resembles Snowden's description of NSA's workday: people are so used to the idea of surveillance day in and day out that it doesn't occur to them for a second that it might not be appropriate.
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoI get the impression that a lot of police forces are "offense" minded, and they are pushing for these kinds of measures. So they want way to break into systems and intercept communications. On the other hand civilians are more "defense" minded, because they're not allowed to attack in the first place. So their preferred M.O. is to protect systems and encrypt communications. A lot of governments apparently don't have as large/as influentual defense minded departments or units, else we wouldn't keep seeing this topic coming back.
- martimarkov 4y agoI'm wondering what about deep-fake CP? With the above narrative about protecting the kids - that would not be kids harmed. Isn't that just going to then generate insane amounts of deep-fake CP if you can't get prosecuted and the abusers learn that? My assumption is that you can't but I might be wrong - haven't read the whole document. So correct me if I'm wrong.
- _fat_santa 4y agoI'm probably wrong here but don't you need a ton of real underlying content to make a deepfake? Like the reason you only see convincing ones of world leaders and celebrities is that they have their face out there a ton. By that logic you would need a ton of actual CP to create CP deepfakes.
- martimarkov 4y agoI mean more generating like artificial humans: https://boredhumans.com/faces.php https://boredhumans.com/faces.php Some some tech like the above. Maybe the term deep-fake is not the correct one
- easrng 4y agoExactly. You need a lot of data to train a GAN.
- martimarkov 4y agoHmm good point. But what about honey-pots? That seems like a very easy thing to do as they already have the dataset, no? Plus you only need images of children in general - not even CP to create those 3 models and then it's just Unreal engine let's say.
- akomtu 4y agoSuch laws is the rich projecting their own thoughts onto the populace. They believe that if the populace is allowed to talk to each other with secrecy, they'd inevitably conspire to take power from the landlords, because those landlords are already conspiring to do exactly this.
- Markoff 4y agoEuropean Commission prefers breaking privacy to "protecting kids" Fixed the title.
- egberts1 4y agoTHINK OF THE CHILDREN! Take away our freedom, buy us more safety from against others (except from maybe the government or something?) Of course, the above is laid on thick and incoherently with sarcasm.