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EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

648 points by starsep 4y ago

bambax 4y ago
"Potential victims" are not victims. That's where the slippery slope begins.
- SamuelAdams 4y ago
  There was a movie called Minority Report that had a similar premise. Basically they would detect murders before they happened and arrest people moments before the murder took place. At the time of the arrest the potential killer had motive and intent, so that’s how they justified it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)?wprov=s...
  - hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
    Based on the story by Philip K. Dick
  - belter 4y ago
    The movie was a warning: "UK police are using AI to predict who could become violent criminals" https://thenextweb.com/news/uk-police-are-using-ai-to-predict-who-could-become-violent-criminals https://thenextweb.com/news/uk-police-are-using-ai-to-predic...
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago
      Ah yes, another skin color detector.
    - _fat_santa 4y ago
      The problem with cops using AI is they seem to put far too much weight on what it discovers. I remember reading a story about how Clearview AI nabbed some random person and claimed that they were some other person. The story wen't on that the cops picked this guy up and bent over backwards to try to make sense of what their AI was telling them, because they thought the AI was infallible. Guy was telling the cops that he had nothing to do with what they were accusing him of and IIRC the cops kept coming back with "but why would the AI single you out" And that's the root of the problem. We in tech know AI can do all these great things but that it also has a high error rate and to take results with a grain of salt. Folks outside of tech think that it's infallible and perfect 100% of the time.
  - Tozen 4y ago
    Good to have brought up that movie, worth a watch (or to see again). Quite odd (or maybe not) that the EU wants to head in that direction, of setting up the near equivalent of their own "Precrime" program. The infallible "algorithm" will stand in for the "Precogs".
linesinthesand 4y ago
Traditional detective work will always be the best way to uncover real crimes of this nature. Any mention of this in support of mass surveillance is just a ruse.
StuckPointer 4y ago
Ironic that this is coming out of the tutanota people whose product disabled my newly opened account, based on unspecified suspicions, for 48 hours, during which mails sent to it bounced as undeliverable, and only notified me about this fact upon subsequent login.
searchableguy 4y ago
Could push for increasing surveillance be related to the recent adoption of digital social credit, CBDC (digital currency), and predictive policy systems in EU countries such as itlay, Netherlands, denmark, and the US? You would need a continous stream of data for building those. It makes a lot of sense if you look at it as countries trying to replicate success of Chinese growth and systems which are highly centralized and depend on the above factors.
- Ambolia 4y ago
  A lot of this got accelerated through Covid policies, "never let a good crisis go to waste" as they saying goes. Many systems that were put in place, can be repurposed for other goals.
  - archagon 4y ago
    Proof that there's any connection here? Or is this just a case of "it feels right to me"?
- chewz 4y ago
  "Power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it" - William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham
- foverzar 4y ago
  > trying to replicate success of Chinese growth and systems which are highly centralized and depend on the above factors There are actually no such functioning "social credit" systems in China. It is mostly a boogeyman narrative.
  - bobmichael 4y ago
    Source?
str3wer 4y ago
this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps getting rejected
- jdrek1 4y ago
  The problem is they only need to win once. What we really need is an immutable section in the EU constitution that anyone who tries to take away basic privacy rights like this is immediately tried for crimes against humanity and sent to prison for the rest of their lives.
  - HL33tibCe7 4y ago
    > The problem is they only need to win once. This is a classic EU tactic
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    No, they don't need to "win once", rules can be changed. And the ECJ/ECHR are a thing (and yes they have ruled against overreaching rules in the past) (though I like your suggestion)
  - blibble 4y ago
    > The problem is they only need to win once. and due to the structure of the EU: once it is has passed it is almost impossible to rescind no matter who you vote for in the future
    - varispeed 4y ago
      You can't even vote out people who keep bringing it in in the first place.
  - zaroth 4y ago
    Conversely, perhaps protection against this kind of dragnet can be enshrined in Constitutions / Bills of Rights / UN Charters to defend against these attacks more fundamentally.
  - 4y ago
einpoklum 4y ago
> In its draft law to combat child sexual abuse It seems like the idea is to oppress people so much it takes their minds off of the sexual abuse they suffered in childhood.
- Victerius 4y ago
  I think those of us who value our privacy are going to have to draw a line sooner or later. Do we want to combat child sexual abuse? Yes, but not at any cost. Are there things more important than combating child sexual abuse? Yes, such as our digital privacy. Are we willing to make the job of the authorities more difficult in combating child abuse in the name of privacy? The answer is yes. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  - zthrowaway 4y ago
    These people couldn’t care less. The line should have already been drawn but people keep falling for this emotional trickery that all politicians use. Packaging up something that nobody agrees with, with a noble cause that nobody would disagree with on the surface. If you oppose this then I guess you oppose child sexual abuse! You wouldn’t want to look like a bad person would you? </s>
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    Drawing such a line is unfortunately fundamentally incompatible with current western attitudes. You need to be able to have adult discussions about death and harm that WILL happen at the scales we're talking about. These harms are often easy to calculate. The harms that come from surveillance dragnets are less immediate and harder to calculate. So in addition to be able to have a discussion that we're incapable of having, we also need to have the balls to say "this long term non-specific harm of the surveillance state is worse than a few kids getting abused". We're nowhere near being able to do either of those right now. Freedom isn't free but the only people who will talk about the cost are extremists of various flavors.
    - 4y ago
krono 4y ago
Yeah not like this. I will turn myself into a black hole as much as possible. If they somehow ever come to suspect me of these things I will gladly do anything I can to support their investigations. They can come by with a warrant, look through my message history specifically and only for evidence related to their investigation, it will happen in my presence, and no copies of my data will be made and/or fed into the basilisk. You know, how it would normally go. What in the world are they thinking over there.
- sharken 4y ago
  - stef25 4y ago
    > full control in the name of COVID Apart from closing bars and restaurants etc what sort of full control did the EU impose?
    - cvak 4y ago
      nothing, it was in countries jurisdiction, actually people were calling for more central response from EU, but they didn't have any means/rights. Only thing EU did afaik, was EU covid certificates, which I'm eternally grateful for.
      - baisq 4y ago
        Grateful why? They served to restrict our rights.
        hef19898 4y ago
        Because EU recogniced certifcates made travel within the EU possible and, besides some funny rules for border crossings, almost pain free. Just imagine going from Geany to France would require to get your German vaccination certificate recognised by the French first, as one example.
cebert 4y ago
CSAM is terrible but how common is it to justify invading all of our privacy. Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? We know alcohol is damaging, maybe we should ruin that fun for everyone too.
- blibble 4y ago
  > Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? the EU commission's starting on this one too: https://www.sae.org/news/2019/04/eu-to-mandate-intelligent-speed-assistance https://www.sae.org/news/2019/04/eu-to-mandate-intelligent-s...
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    People are already selling shirts with "20"(kmh) speed limit signs on the back because of this.
    - pjerem 4y ago
      Man that's smart !
  - varispeed 4y ago
    Once they know what you talk about with your acquaintances, they can just trigger your (on subscription) car to drive into a tree and rewrite the car's black box so that it will look like an accident. Of course that would happen only if your social credit score is very very low.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? In dense cities: yes.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    I would rather ban (too) dense cities. Nobody needs to live at a density of 10k+ people per square kilometre .
1023bytes 4y ago
Seems like it would be sufficient to implement it only on children's accounts
- ogurechny 4y ago
  Ah, yes, children, the second rate people. What you wouldn't tolerate for a second they can always be forced to comply with. For Security, or just because some local school bureaucrats decided on something. A giant security theater already exists in the form of rating systems, age verification prompts, legal agreements of popular services stating they prohibit underage users completely, etc. For decades every single kid has ignored it or learned to find another way if common one was blocked. It's the “responsible adults” who need such large scale stimulation to keep believing in some “naturally unspoiled children” who only need to be “protected”, and therefore can happily live without education and guidance (on topics that are not quite clear to most grown ups either, to be honest).
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 4y ago
I don't think this proposal is quite enough, we can do better to protect the children. The homes of the people who champion this proposal should be thoroughly searched for child abuse materials every week. Naturally, their personal electronic devices should be taken for analysis. I understand this may cause them some inconvenience, but think of the children!
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Sorry, privacy from government surveillance applies only to our elected officials, not to you and me. /s
  - dandellion 4y ago
    When we get spied it's for our own good and when they get spied it's an issue of national security. Because they make the nation and we're just resources they monitor.
  - deergomoo 4y ago
    No need for the /s tag, that’s exactly how it works in a lot of places. Here in the UK, the so-called “Snooper’s Charter” that was passed in 2016 allows bulk data collection and warrantless access to that data…unless you’re a member of parliament.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    Good thing that most of the EU government is unelected.
- baal80spam 4y ago
  Let's not forget banning curtains. Only clean, transparent windows should be allowed.
  - dkersten 4y ago
    Are you sure that's enough? Maybe homes should be built out of fully transparent materials. Don't want any internal rooms to hide in.
anovikov 4y ago
But certainly everyone who really wants will block it, so it will ONLY be used for surveillance of the innocent, probably to influence their political views, or punish the baddies?
psiops 4y ago
Does seem a bit incongruous with EU efforts to protect privacy like GDPR.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  GDPR unfortunately has ample exceptions for governments.
- sprash 4y ago
  GDPR is aimed at local small and medium businesses. They will get destroyed by fines if they save the email address of their customers wrong according to some very complicated elaborated made up rules by the unelected EU commission. Big companies can afford the bureaucratic overhead and all state actors get huge exemptions and can basically collect as much data as they want. GDPR is a ruse.
stef25 4y ago
If anyone's read the full proposal, does it specify what types of communication they want to monitor? It seems unlikely that providers like Google and Meta are just going to turn off their E2E encryption and let the EU plug in their cable. Anything else (like just monitoring national providers) will surely just be pointless.
- mmar 4y ago
  > If anyone's read the full proposal, does it specify what types of communication they want to monitor? It seems unlikely that providers like Google and Meta are just going to turn off their E2E encryption and let the EU plug in their cable. > Anything else (like just monitoring national providers) will surely just be pointless. The proposal talk about keeping E2E encryption, but providees should still have a way to detect content. From page 27: > [...] this Regulation leaves to the provider concerned the choice of the technologies to be operated to comply effectively with detection orders and should not be understood as incentivising or disincentivising the use of any given technology, provided that the technologies and accompanying measures meet the requirements of this Regulation. That includes the use of end-to-end encryption technology, which is an important tool to guarantee the security and confidentiality of the communications of users, including those of children. When executing the detection order, providers should take all available safeguard measures to ensure that the technologies employed by them cannot be used by them or their employees for purposes other than compliance with this Regulation, nor by third parties, and thus to avoid undermining the security and confidentiality of the communications of users.
- lazarus101 4y ago
  Why do you think they wouldn't? They did it for the US with the "Patriot Act"
severak_cz 4y ago
I don't understand how does "grooming detection algorithm" looks.
- op00to 4y ago
  IF MESSAGE_SENT INCLUDES "A/S/L" AND MESSAGE_REPLY.A < 18 THEN DIAL 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
- VLM 4y ago
  It'll be defined in practice as wrongthink WRT political, economic, or religious belief. It'll be sold to "save the children" but it'll likely never be used for that.
- vaylian 4y ago
  I doesn't. But politicians like to pretend that smart technology can solve all problems.
jstummbillig 4y ago
The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot pole is awkward at best. It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly so. Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution for the abuse caused by those who are open to abusing others seems a little too internet-hippie to be taken seriously in 2022, and that's a little concerning when it's the echo chambers of those best qualified and responsible for coming up with workable solutions. Edit: What a cacophony of indignation and polemic black/white responses. Absolutely shocking.
- pfortuny 4y ago
  History has taught us a lesson. The USSR was hell on Earth, as was Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Privacy of communication is such an essential part of modern culture that any kind of power trying to prevent it is suspect. Communications can only be suspect under a judicial order: otherwise the government is omnipotent because it can prevent anything.
  - dandellion 4y ago
    And the inquisitions, and nazi Germany, and... Even when we don't forget history we get cocky and think we know better, that it will be different this time.
- croes 4y ago
  How does surveillance solve the abuse problem? The abuse happens in reality and only some of the results are shared over the internet. This is Zensursula once again, actionism with serious consequences without a real solution. Countries like China and Russia will gratefully adopt the EU's rationale for its surveillance measures
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Because the situation is far more complex than this, and it's typical of governmental institutes to throw a blanket solution at it to increase resistance when it isn't at all obvious whether they will abuse their knowledge and power later in time. You can teach these kids to take precautions, but you can't prevent them making mistakes if they still want to. Now you're weighting privacy and autonomy against lifelines to keep the ones who don't heed warnings from going off the deep end.
Freak_NL 4y ago
It's scary, because CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is very, very broad, and quite vague in its definition¹. My three year old son stayed with my parents for a week, and he was being taught to swim in their swimming pool. Of course, I get sent pictures and clips of his progress by a proud grandma, and of course, him being a toddler, he felt swimming trunks to be completely optional (and of course, they are at his age in a private pool). That's not CSAM right? But who knows how the AI will mark those happy pics? Some quirk in its programming and training leading to them being pushed way up whatever ranking is used? It's a nude child after all, and that is most likely one of the few things such an algorithm can detect quite reliably. The automated filter won't care about the context though, and if any of the recent failures of algorithms ruining peoples lives are anything to go by (the Dutch Toeslagenaffaire comes to mind), being flagged by the CSAM filter is a high risk event — even if you can clear your name later by human intervention — because now you are on a list. 1: People tend to conjure up horrific images of underage children getting raped by adults when they hear 'CSAM' or 'child pornography', but when you read up on the legal definitions used it becomes very vague, quite fast. A seventeen year old boy sending a dick pic to his 18 year old lover is producing child pornography and can in many jurisdictions be sentenced as such, and nudism of any minor can be seen as CSAM if the pose they strike can be construed as 'erotic' — yet there is no clear definition of what this means, falling squarely into “I'll know it when I see it” territory.
- vidarh 4y ago
  I almost think these efforts will need to succeed in become applied in a way too authoritarian way before there's a sufficient backlash. Unfortunately that means there's likely to be a lot of collateral damage.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    Seems that's the only way people end up caring to fix things these days.
- stef25 4y ago
  You're probably not the first person to ask the question of "but what about parents taking pictures of their naked kids in a pool", I'm sure they plan on having some way of dealing with it if anything to lighten their workload. That doesn't mean it will be perfect but no matter how jaded we all are, nobody wants to start falsely accusing innocent people.
a-dub 4y ago
seems like maybe a better approach might be to require software developers to give parents/guardians features that allow a comprehensive view into the online activities of their children. although unclear, that creates more visibility than has ever existed and could cause problems for kids who have different views from their parents. we're in uncharted territory, really.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  This is not about parent control, it's about people doing horrible porn with toddlers and then distributing it to other adults.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - a-dub 4y ago
    yeah. maybe parental controls so parents know who their kids are talking to paired with good old fashioned undercover detective work might be a preferable approach to eastern bloc style listening posts. if you want to get fancy, maybe build undercover chat bots or sophisticated honey pots.
    - flavius29663 4y ago
      but undercover detective work is hard, spying on everyone is easy
hexo 4y ago
I can't help myself. Everytime I see "CSAM" I read it as SCAM. Because thats what the legislation is.
outside1234 4y ago
So we need to always use a VPN - got it.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  The idea is that the scanning happens on the device.
- tiborsaas 4y ago
  Yes, till they are legal.
- hsdropout 4y ago
  A VPN would not be relevant. The ask is for scanning to take place at the source or destination, not across the wire.
- contravariant 4y ago
  VPNs are pointless if this breaks end to end encryption. VPNs are pointless if end to end encryption isn't broken.
varispeed 4y ago
So when I talked about these proposals few years ago, I was told I am a conspiracy theorist and the EU wouldn't have done such a thing. People blindly believe that the EU is this source of universal greatness and there is nothing sinister going on behind the scenes. Unfortunately this effort goes beyond the EU - other countries, mainly those ran by WEF people, develop similar changes. How are they going to determine your social credit score, without knowing your thoughts and who you talk to?
tut-urut-utut 4y ago
The EU is clearly becoming a dystopian surveillance state, not that much different from China. And we still think we live are somehow better than that, and we live in democracy and freedom? That being said, what are the realistic alternatives? Self compiled Signal? Matrix running on own server? Something else, like these Sky app supposedly used by criminals and drug dealers?
macinjosh 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg&t=182s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg&t=182s
schroeding 4y ago
The worst thing is that, while the EU proposes dubious stuff like this, the police doesn't actually try to remove such content from the internet or are at least really ineffective at doing so. There was a documentary[1] from the german public tv station NDR in which reporters / journalists managed to delete the majority of content from one such CSAM forum, by sending deletion requests to the hosters. The police just... did nothing about it? :/ It's mind boggling. It would be nice if only 50% of the energy put into laws with questionable results like this, would be used to give victims of sexual child abuse more help and support (or, in many cases, some at all) to continue living as much as possible despite the monsters in their own heads that such sexual abuse creates, wouldn't it? :/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItLpwkQMUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItLpwkQMUQ Sadly without official english subtitles, but you can run this article about it through deepl.com: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/panorama/kinderpornografie-loeschung-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/panorama/kinderpornog...
- thwoeroi234 4y ago
  They're probably busy with their local pedophile-rings in Brussels.
- momenti 4y ago
  This proves that none of these institutions and politicians pushing for more surveillance actually care about the problem (while the urgency of the problem is dubious to begin with). It's all about power and funding. If the problem was eradicated, then they would lose their purpose and funding.
- Avamander 4y ago
  A lot of cybercrime is like that, the police are very incompetent at handling it. I've seen a criminal literally logged in with their personal account (with 2FA, home address etc.) and the case was dropped because they wouldn't/couldn't identify the person. I don't think they even attempted. Botnets are annoying to dismantle even within the EU, it's not even illegal in some countries to not remove reported malware. I view such legislation as an excuse to their general incompetence.
can16358p 4y ago
I don't think the actual purpose here is to protect children. The actual purpose here to invade people's privacy, (ab)using a sensitive topic like children sexual abuse as a scapegoat as many people don't want to oppose to some protection on a sensitive topic and be marked as a potential criminal (or criminal ideology supporter).
b65e8bee43c2ed0 4y ago
I feel that in the near future, we'll have a campaign against E2EE with the intensity of the current campaign against guns in the US
- varispeed 4y ago
  If you look into it, these things are lobbied by globalists like WEF. They also happen to run multiple governments around the world, so these things are being developed in parallel for 2030 Great Reset agenda. It has different pace in different places due to cultural differences i.e. some countries wouldn't care about ban of E2EE while other would take it to the streets. But they have a strategy for the latter scenario as well. They'll pretend to give up and then piggy back bits and pieces through other unrelated legislation until it is fully in place.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    They can keep calling it a conspiracy, but at least from what I've seen, more people are becoming aware of the truth every day. It gives me a bit of hope; only a little bit.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hnthrowaway0328 4y ago
Basically some excuses to increase bureaucratic power. Step 1: Find some excuses (climate, gender equality, CSAM, all legitimate) Step 2: Create layers and layers of committees and legislations (happy lawyers and maybe accountants), increase social cost in general Step 3: Extend to other purposes if possible
Loic 4y ago
What is interesting is that running such software on my systems would breach all the NDA I have with my customers. As a company, it would not be possible to work anymore from the EU.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Going to guess some things are exempt. But yes, you are right. Our nda’s do not allow this either.
DeathArrow 4y ago
This is the new democracy. This is the new freedom. What is the difference from China or Russia?
- mirceal 4y ago
  good point. there are two types of dystopia: the 1984 flavor or the Brave New World flavor China and Russia are doing 1984, the "West" was doing Brave New World but they want to try something new. So why not a blend?
Mizza 4y ago
Isn't this an insanely stupid idea? Doesn't it open the door to a new type of ransomware - pay up, or we'll flood your devices with CSAM and submit a tip about it?
- lamontcg 4y ago
  I keep posting this objection on every single one of these articles. It is weird how supposedly techno-savvy people can't spot how easy this would be. But I'd think it would look more like an alternative to murder-for-hire when ruining someone else's life and throwing them in jail would be sufficient. Get someone else to pay reasonably big money to actually do it and not just threaten it. This may have happened already and some middle aged dude caught with CSAM is crying about how he's been framed--only he really has been framed. But nobody believes him, because nobody believes a sex pervert. It seems like a great way to me to put out a 'hit' on someone because it can be done from across the world without leaving any physical traces, with the actions taken across national borders, and much less likelihood of the cops being able to do anything about it, even if they do detect it and the person winds up going free. Agencies like the CIA may also be able to exploit this against foreign politicians and public figures they don't like.
  - ajb 4y ago
    Well yes, that's what I though 20 years ago. But I've never seen a report of actual framing of someone via CSAM. gung-ho police mistaking innocent nude kid pics, yes. Criminalisation of sexting by teenagers, yes. But framing? Haven't seen it reported. There are two reasons I guess. One is that pedophilia is the epitome of evil in our society and even career criminals would find handling CSAM off putting and risky. The second is that if you can hack someone, there's easier ways of taking their money. Stealing their credit cards being the obvious one. Money motivated criminals always go by the easiest route. That doesn't rule it out. If we get an uptick in cyberwarfare, I wouldn't be surprised to see this tried, because 'authority says its okay to do this' is an effective
    - insta_anon 4y ago
api 4y ago
It’ll get worse when it becomes obvious that on device scanning is unenforceable without control of the device. Next up will be a ban on unsigned apps and independent app stores and/or an outright ban on encryption. The EU is about to become as bad as China or perhaps even worse if this stuff goes forward.
quazar 4y ago
The title page states: > Text with EEA relevance So it's not only EU, but basically whole Europe.
Macha 4y ago
As with the UK internet filters, the next step will be "Oh, so we have all this infrastructure already, we should extend it to other forms of illegal content, like piracy, DRM circumvention, etc"
- ulzeraj 4y ago
  This. I'm pretty sure I've read COVID contract tracing data being used for other purposes somewhere out there.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Was there so much crying about the UK ones or was everyone obsessed with covid? During covid the uk spent a lot on similar (and I think worse) tech? Maybe the uk will license it?
  - Macha 4y ago
    The biggest outcry over the UK one was people's need to contact their ISP to be added to a list to access legal porn, which may have overshadowed the rest of the points. This was a while before covid and has largely moved to just being accepted to my understanding.
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      During covid there were these ‘contests’ [0]. And there was more (will try to find). [0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/18/uk-names-five-projects-its-funding-for-csam-detection/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/18/uk-names-five-projects-its...
yedpodtrzitko 4y ago
When all you have is We Need More Surveillance, everything looks like Because Terrorism / CSAM.
DeathArrow 4y ago
Surveillance is for children. Search without warrants is to keep us safe from drugs. War is for peace and democracy. How much can politicians, activists and beaurocrats pervert the truth?
tluyben2 4y ago
Are they cooperating with the UK; seems there were a lot of requests for proposals from them during covid with millions attached to scan e2e connections and other csam measures.
35803288 4y ago
I'll be brief. All chats, calls and emails by EU MPs should be public. Then and only then, they could pass this monstrosity.
weddpros 4y ago
Incest is the massive child abuse elephant in the room, and listening to our communications won't help those millions of children who suffer. Almost 7 million in France (1). I'm disgusted. I'm pretty sure when they say "one child in 5,6 or 7", it's really incest in 90-99% of cases, not some internet pedophile they claim to catch. They won't protect children with that law, because it's not the right law to fight child abuse. [1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1231341/nombre-victimes-inceste-france/ https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1231341/nombre-victimes...
- cryptonym 4y ago
  Basically 1 person out of ten? That's frightening. Statista says it's an estimation but all information about source and methodology is behind a paywall.
worstenbrood 4y ago
This will push "criminals" further away from the common applications and they'll start using their own (forks?) and setup their own servers. Then there is no control at all anymore.
belter 4y ago
Recent discussions "European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341249 "Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368
wiz21c 4y ago
are there groups in europe that plan to make a public protest ? I'd like to join.
baud147258 4y ago
didn't we already discuss this yesterday and the day before?
- encrux 4y ago
  And we should keep discussing it in the days to come, until this topic never has to come up again because it's not being proposed anymore.
brainzap 4y ago
And all the energy and effort and money doesn’t even help against child abuse.
Tozen 4y ago
What's the logic with this? So, everyone is a suspect, who must be under constant and continual surveillance. You are guilty, until you can prove that you are innocent.
nbzso 4y ago
My goto solution since Apple CSAM fiasco: 1. Manjaro on office computers. 2. MacOS Catalina with Little Snitch for designers. 3. Air-gapped MacOS Mojave for testing and designers. 4.Limited smartphone usage to banking apps and phone calls. 5. Using dedicated camera for photography, if uploaded - metadata cleaning. 6. Serious offline book, movies, articles archive. 7. No cloud services. NAS only. 8. Limited social media activity, 20 minutes of Twitter, similar usage for Hackernews. 9. No connections to internet without active VPN. 10. Using internet primary for work.
imchillyb 4y ago
If you /truly/ believe that this is about CSAM, you've got your head firmly entrenched up your own ass. This is -yet another- power grab by The State; that's all this is. Every human on earth should be firing the SoBs that suggest these things. Every single legislator that champions these types of privacy invasion should be fired; period. Their names are on a big list now. Fire these assholes.
insta_anon 4y ago
Anyone who thinks that this is really about protecting children should look into how the catholic church, who has a long long [0] history of abusing children in Europe, is treated. If governments wanted to fight child abuse they could easily start there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kornhole 4y ago
How can they scan messages on my xmpp server using OMEMO e2ee?
- MattJ100 4y ago
  They can't. They just want to make it illegal for you not to scan them if they decide you are a communication provider and they serve you with what they call a "detection order". If you receive such an order, you have to follow the scanning rules they have laid out.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    Thanks. I think it will be a little hard to enforce. I believe tens of thousands of XMPP and Matrix servers are currently running, and they are proliferating. Matrix protocol management is centralized giving authorities a place to apply pressure, but people can still create their own implementations of the standard choosing to include this or not.
    - zaik 4y ago
      > tens of thousands few hundreds in the federation tops
taylorius 4y ago
Don't get me wrong, the EU never met a piece of snooping legislation they didn't like, but the fact that the top part of the page is trying to sell me some encrypted email address makes me wonder about the article's editorial integrity...
one-red-cent 4y ago
How do we stop this?
- encrux 4y ago
  > How do we stop this? I am not sure, honestly. I remember the Article 13/17 protests. To me it seemed like even though thousands of people went to protest, they simply did not care. And back then, it was about Copyright. Now, a group of people would have to protest against a proposal that's supposed to "protect the children". I can already see what populists would do to any group. In the end, it all boils down to education (raising awareness), protesting (and talking to those who want to understand) and electing officials who care about the people.
zrosandic 4y ago
So it seems that no one should use anymore any "digital", e.g. mobile, mail or whatever "over the wire" way of communication. I was always worried about communicating that has any surveillance. My own stuff should be my own things. We should use older way of communication between us on daily basis and just occasionally use the "over the digital media" communication for quick agreement on person to person or person to group meetings. Anyway, all this gone so far that we really do not need digital way of communication, sharing things. The things like Facebook are crap. The peoples are not digital, they are physical beings and the way we should interact is out of the "digital world".
mensetmanusman 4y ago
CSAM = hash checking There is no way to verify that a hash is actually checking for CSAM. It can be used for anything by any future government good or bad. E.g. an Austrian musician was recently imprisoned for 10 years for composing/producing pro-Nazi songs. A hash check could find anyone who listened to the music (even reporters curious to listen to what they are reporting on.) CSAM is a useful vehicle to get this technology deployed since no one is pro CSAM.
ernirulez 4y ago
EU is a hidden and well thought dictatorship, disguised as a democracy with values where everybody who complains and says otherwise is marked as an enemy. An autocracy full of useless burocrats who live out of citizens taxes

648 points by starsep 4y ago

bambax 4y ago

"Potential victims" are not victims. That's where the slippery slope begins.

SamuelAdams 4y ago
There was a movie called Minority Report that had a similar premise. Basically they would detect murders before they happened and arrest people moments before the murder took place. At the time of the arrest the potential killer had motive and intent, so that’s how they justified it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)?wprov=s...
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  Based on the story by Philip K. Dick
- belter 4y ago
  The movie was a warning: "UK police are using AI to predict who could become violent criminals" https://thenextweb.com/news/uk-police-are-using-ai-to-predict-who-could-become-violent-criminals https://thenextweb.com/news/uk-police-are-using-ai-to-predic...
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    Ah yes, another skin color detector.
  - _fat_santa 4y ago
    The problem with cops using AI is they seem to put far too much weight on what it discovers. I remember reading a story about how Clearview AI nabbed some random person and claimed that they were some other person. The story wen't on that the cops picked this guy up and bent over backwards to try to make sense of what their AI was telling them, because they thought the AI was infallible. Guy was telling the cops that he had nothing to do with what they were accusing him of and IIRC the cops kept coming back with "but why would the AI single you out" And that's the root of the problem. We in tech know AI can do all these great things but that it also has a high error rate and to take results with a grain of salt. Folks outside of tech think that it's infallible and perfect 100% of the time.
- Tozen 4y ago
  Good to have brought up that movie, worth a watch (or to see again). Quite odd (or maybe not) that the EU wants to head in that direction, of setting up the near equivalent of their own "Precrime" program. The infallible "algorithm" will stand in for the "Precogs".

linesinthesand 4y ago

Traditional detective work will always be the best way to uncover real crimes of this nature. Any mention of this in support of mass surveillance is just a ruse.

StuckPointer 4y ago

Ironic that this is coming out of the tutanota people whose product disabled my newly opened account, based on unspecified suspicions, for 48 hours, during which mails sent to it bounced as undeliverable, and only notified me about this fact upon subsequent login.

searchableguy 4y ago

Could push for increasing surveillance be related to the recent adoption of digital social credit, CBDC (digital currency), and predictive policy systems in EU countries such as itlay, Netherlands, denmark, and the US? You would need a continous stream of data for building those. It makes a lot of sense if you look at it as countries trying to replicate success of Chinese growth and systems which are highly centralized and depend on the above factors.

Ambolia 4y ago
A lot of this got accelerated through Covid policies, "never let a good crisis go to waste" as they saying goes. Many systems that were put in place, can be repurposed for other goals.
- archagon 4y ago
  Proof that there's any connection here? Or is this just a case of "it feels right to me"?
chewz 4y ago
"Power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it" - William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham
foverzar 4y ago
> trying to replicate success of Chinese growth and systems which are highly centralized and depend on the above factors There are actually no such functioning "social credit" systems in China. It is mostly a boogeyman narrative.
- bobmichael 4y ago
  Source?

str3wer 4y ago

this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps getting rejected

jdrek1 4y ago
The problem is they only need to win once. What we really need is an immutable section in the EU constitution that anyone who tries to take away basic privacy rights like this is immediately tried for crimes against humanity and sent to prison for the rest of their lives.
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  > The problem is they only need to win once. This is a classic EU tactic
- raverbashing 4y ago
  No, they don't need to "win once", rules can be changed. And the ECJ/ECHR are a thing (and yes they have ruled against overreaching rules in the past) (though I like your suggestion)
- blibble 4y ago
  > The problem is they only need to win once. and due to the structure of the EU: once it is has passed it is almost impossible to rescind no matter who you vote for in the future
  - varispeed 4y ago
    You can't even vote out people who keep bringing it in in the first place.
- zaroth 4y ago
  Conversely, perhaps protection against this kind of dragnet can be enshrined in Constitutions / Bills of Rights / UN Charters to defend against these attacks more fundamentally.
- 4y ago

einpoklum 4y ago

> In its draft law to combat child sexual abuse It seems like the idea is to oppress people so much it takes their minds off of the sexual abuse they suffered in childhood.

Victerius 4y ago
I think those of us who value our privacy are going to have to draw a line sooner or later. Do we want to combat child sexual abuse? Yes, but not at any cost. Are there things more important than combating child sexual abuse? Yes, such as our digital privacy. Are we willing to make the job of the authorities more difficult in combating child abuse in the name of privacy? The answer is yes. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- zthrowaway 4y ago
  These people couldn’t care less. The line should have already been drawn but people keep falling for this emotional trickery that all politicians use. Packaging up something that nobody agrees with, with a noble cause that nobody would disagree with on the surface. If you oppose this then I guess you oppose child sexual abuse! You wouldn’t want to look like a bad person would you? </s>
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  Drawing such a line is unfortunately fundamentally incompatible with current western attitudes. You need to be able to have adult discussions about death and harm that WILL happen at the scales we're talking about. These harms are often easy to calculate. The harms that come from surveillance dragnets are less immediate and harder to calculate. So in addition to be able to have a discussion that we're incapable of having, we also need to have the balls to say "this long term non-specific harm of the surveillance state is worse than a few kids getting abused". We're nowhere near being able to do either of those right now. Freedom isn't free but the only people who will talk about the cost are extremists of various flavors.
  - 4y ago

krono 4y ago

Yeah not like this. I will turn myself into a black hole as much as possible. If they somehow ever come to suspect me of these things I will gladly do anything I can to support their investigations. They can come by with a warrant, look through my message history specifically and only for evidence related to their investigation, it will happen in my presence, and no copies of my data will be made and/or fed into the basilisk. You know, how it would normally go. What in the world are they thinking over there.

sharken 4y ago
- stef25 4y ago
  > full control in the name of COVID Apart from closing bars and restaurants etc what sort of full control did the EU impose?
  - cvak 4y ago
    nothing, it was in countries jurisdiction, actually people were calling for more central response from EU, but they didn't have any means/rights. Only thing EU did afaik, was EU covid certificates, which I'm eternally grateful for.
    - baisq 4y ago
      Grateful why? They served to restrict our rights.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Because EU recogniced certifcates made travel within the EU possible and, besides some funny rules for border crossings, almost pain free. Just imagine going from Geany to France would require to get your German vaccination certificate recognised by the French first, as one example.

cebert 4y ago

CSAM is terrible but how common is it to justify invading all of our privacy. Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? We know alcohol is damaging, maybe we should ruin that fun for everyone too.

blibble 4y ago
> Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? the EU commission's starting on this one too: https://www.sae.org/news/2019/04/eu-to-mandate-intelligent-speed-assistance https://www.sae.org/news/2019/04/eu-to-mandate-intelligent-s...
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  People are already selling shirts with "20"(kmh) speed limit signs on the back because of this.
  - pjerem 4y ago
    Man that's smart !
- varispeed 4y ago
  Once they know what you talk about with your acquaintances, they can just trigger your (on subscription) car to drive into a tree and rewrite the car's black box so that it will look like an accident. Of course that would happen only if your social credit score is very very low.
goodpoint 4y ago
> Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? In dense cities: yes.
- Tade0 4y ago
  I would rather ban (too) dense cities. Nobody needs to live at a density of 10k+ people per square kilometre .

1023bytes 4y ago

Seems like it would be sufficient to implement it only on children's accounts

ogurechny 4y ago
Ah, yes, children, the second rate people. What you wouldn't tolerate for a second they can always be forced to comply with. For Security, or just because some local school bureaucrats decided on something. A giant security theater already exists in the form of rating systems, age verification prompts, legal agreements of popular services stating they prohibit underage users completely, etc. For decades every single kid has ignored it or learned to find another way if common one was blocked. It's the “responsible adults” who need such large scale stimulation to keep believing in some “naturally unspoiled children” who only need to be “protected”, and therefore can happily live without education and guidance (on topics that are not quite clear to most grown ups either, to be honest).

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 4y ago

I don't think this proposal is quite enough, we can do better to protect the children. The homes of the people who champion this proposal should be thoroughly searched for child abuse materials every week. Naturally, their personal electronic devices should be taken for analysis. I understand this may cause them some inconvenience, but think of the children!

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Sorry, privacy from government surveillance applies only to our elected officials, not to you and me. /s
- dandellion 4y ago
  When we get spied it's for our own good and when they get spied it's an issue of national security. Because they make the nation and we're just resources they monitor.
- deergomoo 4y ago
  No need for the /s tag, that’s exactly how it works in a lot of places. Here in the UK, the so-called “Snooper’s Charter” that was passed in 2016 allows bulk data collection and warrantless access to that data…unless you’re a member of parliament.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  Good thing that most of the EU government is unelected.
baal80spam 4y ago
Let's not forget banning curtains. Only clean, transparent windows should be allowed.
- dkersten 4y ago
  Are you sure that's enough? Maybe homes should be built out of fully transparent materials. Don't want any internal rooms to hide in.

anovikov 4y ago

But certainly everyone who really wants will block it, so it will ONLY be used for surveillance of the innocent, probably to influence their political views, or punish the baddies?

psiops 4y ago

Does seem a bit incongruous with EU efforts to protect privacy like GDPR.

gpderetta 4y ago
GDPR unfortunately has ample exceptions for governments.
sprash 4y ago
GDPR is aimed at local small and medium businesses. They will get destroyed by fines if they save the email address of their customers wrong according to some very complicated elaborated made up rules by the unelected EU commission. Big companies can afford the bureaucratic overhead and all state actors get huge exemptions and can basically collect as much data as they want. GDPR is a ruse.

stef25 4y ago

If anyone's read the full proposal, does it specify what types of communication they want to monitor? It seems unlikely that providers like Google and Meta are just going to turn off their E2E encryption and let the EU plug in their cable. Anything else (like just monitoring national providers) will surely just be pointless.

mmar 4y ago
> If anyone's read the full proposal, does it specify what types of communication they want to monitor? It seems unlikely that providers like Google and Meta are just going to turn off their E2E encryption and let the EU plug in their cable. > Anything else (like just monitoring national providers) will surely just be pointless. The proposal talk about keeping E2E encryption, but providees should still have a way to detect content. From page 27: > [...] this Regulation leaves to the provider concerned the choice of the technologies to be operated to comply effectively with detection orders and should not be understood as incentivising or disincentivising the use of any given technology, provided that the technologies and accompanying measures meet the requirements of this Regulation. That includes the use of end-to-end encryption technology, which is an important tool to guarantee the security and confidentiality of the communications of users, including those of children. When executing the detection order, providers should take all available safeguard measures to ensure that the technologies employed by them cannot be used by them or their employees for purposes other than compliance with this Regulation, nor by third parties, and thus to avoid undermining the security and confidentiality of the communications of users.
lazarus101 4y ago
Why do you think they wouldn't? They did it for the US with the "Patriot Act"

severak_cz 4y ago

I don't understand how does "grooming detection algorithm" looks.

op00to 4y ago
IF MESSAGE_SENT INCLUDES "A/S/L" AND MESSAGE_REPLY.A < 18 THEN DIAL 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
VLM 4y ago
It'll be defined in practice as wrongthink WRT political, economic, or religious belief. It'll be sold to "save the children" but it'll likely never be used for that.
vaylian 4y ago
I doesn't. But politicians like to pretend that smart technology can solve all problems.

jstummbillig 4y ago

The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot pole is awkward at best. It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly so. Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution for the abuse caused by those who are open to abusing others seems a little too internet-hippie to be taken seriously in 2022, and that's a little concerning when it's the echo chambers of those best qualified and responsible for coming up with workable solutions. Edit: What a cacophony of indignation and polemic black/white responses. Absolutely shocking.

pfortuny 4y ago
History has taught us a lesson. The USSR was hell on Earth, as was Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Privacy of communication is such an essential part of modern culture that any kind of power trying to prevent it is suspect. Communications can only be suspect under a judicial order: otherwise the government is omnipotent because it can prevent anything.
- dandellion 4y ago
  And the inquisitions, and nazi Germany, and... Even when we don't forget history we get cocky and think we know better, that it will be different this time.
croes 4y ago
How does surveillance solve the abuse problem? The abuse happens in reality and only some of the results are shared over the internet. This is Zensursula once again, actionism with serious consequences without a real solution. Countries like China and Russia will gratefully adopt the EU's rationale for its surveillance measures
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Because the situation is far more complex than this, and it's typical of governmental institutes to throw a blanket solution at it to increase resistance when it isn't at all obvious whether they will abuse their knowledge and power later in time. You can teach these kids to take precautions, but you can't prevent them making mistakes if they still want to. Now you're weighting privacy and autonomy against lifelines to keep the ones who don't heed warnings from going off the deep end.

Freak_NL 4y ago

It's scary, because CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is very, very broad, and quite vague in its definition¹. My three year old son stayed with my parents for a week, and he was being taught to swim in their swimming pool. Of course, I get sent pictures and clips of his progress by a proud grandma, and of course, him being a toddler, he felt swimming trunks to be completely optional (and of course, they are at his age in a private pool). That's not CSAM right? But who knows how the AI will mark those happy pics? Some quirk in its programming and training leading to them being pushed way up whatever ranking is used? It's a nude child after all, and that is most likely one of the few things such an algorithm can detect quite reliably. The automated filter won't care about the context though, and if any of the recent failures of algorithms ruining peoples lives are anything to go by (the Dutch Toeslagenaffaire comes to mind), being flagged by the CSAM filter is a high risk event — even if you can clear your name later by human intervention — because now you are on a list. 1: People tend to conjure up horrific images of underage children getting raped by adults when they hear 'CSAM' or 'child pornography', but when you read up on the legal definitions used it becomes very vague, quite fast. A seventeen year old boy sending a dick pic to his 18 year old lover is producing child pornography and can in many jurisdictions be sentenced as such, and nudism of any minor can be seen as CSAM if the pose they strike can be construed as 'erotic' — yet there is no clear definition of what this means, falling squarely into “I'll know it when I see it” territory.

vidarh 4y ago
I almost think these efforts will need to succeed in become applied in a way too authoritarian way before there's a sufficient backlash. Unfortunately that means there's likely to be a lot of collateral damage.
- seanw444 4y ago
  Seems that's the only way people end up caring to fix things these days.
stef25 4y ago
You're probably not the first person to ask the question of "but what about parents taking pictures of their naked kids in a pool", I'm sure they plan on having some way of dealing with it if anything to lighten their workload. That doesn't mean it will be perfect but no matter how jaded we all are, nobody wants to start falsely accusing innocent people.

a-dub 4y ago

seems like maybe a better approach might be to require software developers to give parents/guardians features that allow a comprehensive view into the online activities of their children. although unclear, that creates more visibility than has ever existed and could cause problems for kids who have different views from their parents. we're in uncharted territory, really.

flavius29663 4y ago
This is not about parent control, it's about people doing horrible porn with toddlers and then distributing it to other adults.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- a-dub 4y ago
  yeah. maybe parental controls so parents know who their kids are talking to paired with good old fashioned undercover detective work might be a preferable approach to eastern bloc style listening posts. if you want to get fancy, maybe build undercover chat bots or sophisticated honey pots.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    but undercover detective work is hard, spying on everyone is easy

hexo 4y ago

I can't help myself. Everytime I see "CSAM" I read it as SCAM. Because thats what the legislation is.

outside1234 4y ago

So we need to always use a VPN - got it.

pantalaimon 4y ago
The idea is that the scanning happens on the device.
tiborsaas 4y ago
Yes, till they are legal.
hsdropout 4y ago
A VPN would not be relevant. The ask is for scanning to take place at the source or destination, not across the wire.
contravariant 4y ago
VPNs are pointless if this breaks end to end encryption. VPNs are pointless if end to end encryption isn't broken.

varispeed 4y ago

So when I talked about these proposals few years ago, I was told I am a conspiracy theorist and the EU wouldn't have done such a thing. People blindly believe that the EU is this source of universal greatness and there is nothing sinister going on behind the scenes. Unfortunately this effort goes beyond the EU - other countries, mainly those ran by WEF people, develop similar changes. How are they going to determine your social credit score, without knowing your thoughts and who you talk to?

tut-urut-utut 4y ago

The EU is clearly becoming a dystopian surveillance state, not that much different from China. And we still think we live are somehow better than that, and we live in democracy and freedom? That being said, what are the realistic alternatives? Self compiled Signal? Matrix running on own server? Something else, like these Sky app supposedly used by criminals and drug dealers?

macinjosh 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg&t=182s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg&t=182s

schroeding 4y ago

The worst thing is that, while the EU proposes dubious stuff like this, the police doesn't actually try to remove such content from the internet or are at least really ineffective at doing so. There was a documentary[1] from the german public tv station NDR in which reporters / journalists managed to delete the majority of content from one such CSAM forum, by sending deletion requests to the hosters. The police just... did nothing about it? :/ It's mind boggling. It would be nice if only 50% of the energy put into laws with questionable results like this, would be used to give victims of sexual child abuse more help and support (or, in many cases, some at all) to continue living as much as possible despite the monsters in their own heads that such sexual abuse creates, wouldn't it? :/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItLpwkQMUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItLpwkQMUQ Sadly without official english subtitles, but you can run this article about it through deepl.com: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/panorama/kinderpornografie-loeschung-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/panorama/kinderpornog...

thwoeroi234 4y ago
They're probably busy with their local pedophile-rings in Brussels.
momenti 4y ago
This proves that none of these institutions and politicians pushing for more surveillance actually care about the problem (while the urgency of the problem is dubious to begin with). It's all about power and funding. If the problem was eradicated, then they would lose their purpose and funding.
Avamander 4y ago
A lot of cybercrime is like that, the police are very incompetent at handling it. I've seen a criminal literally logged in with their personal account (with 2FA, home address etc.) and the case was dropped because they wouldn't/couldn't identify the person. I don't think they even attempted. Botnets are annoying to dismantle even within the EU, it's not even illegal in some countries to not remove reported malware. I view such legislation as an excuse to their general incompetence.

can16358p 4y ago

I don't think the actual purpose here is to protect children. The actual purpose here to invade people's privacy, (ab)using a sensitive topic like children sexual abuse as a scapegoat as many people don't want to oppose to some protection on a sensitive topic and be marked as a potential criminal (or criminal ideology supporter).

b65e8bee43c2ed0 4y ago

I feel that in the near future, we'll have a campaign against E2EE with the intensity of the current campaign against guns in the US

varispeed 4y ago
If you look into it, these things are lobbied by globalists like WEF. They also happen to run multiple governments around the world, so these things are being developed in parallel for 2030 Great Reset agenda. It has different pace in different places due to cultural differences i.e. some countries wouldn't care about ban of E2EE while other would take it to the streets. But they have a strategy for the latter scenario as well. They'll pretend to give up and then piggy back bits and pieces through other unrelated legislation until it is fully in place.
- userbinator 4y ago
  They can keep calling it a conspiracy, but at least from what I've seen, more people are becoming aware of the truth every day. It gives me a bit of hope; only a little bit.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hnthrowaway0328 4y ago

Basically some excuses to increase bureaucratic power. Step 1: Find some excuses (climate, gender equality, CSAM, all legitimate) Step 2: Create layers and layers of committees and legislations (happy lawyers and maybe accountants), increase social cost in general Step 3: Extend to other purposes if possible

Loic 4y ago

What is interesting is that running such software on my systems would breach all the NDA I have with my customers. As a company, it would not be possible to work anymore from the EU.

tluyben2 4y ago
Going to guess some things are exempt. But yes, you are right. Our nda’s do not allow this either.

DeathArrow 4y ago

This is the new democracy. This is the new freedom. What is the difference from China or Russia?

mirceal 4y ago
good point. there are two types of dystopia: the 1984 flavor or the Brave New World flavor China and Russia are doing 1984, the "West" was doing Brave New World but they want to try something new. So why not a blend?

Mizza 4y ago

Isn't this an insanely stupid idea? Doesn't it open the door to a new type of ransomware - pay up, or we'll flood your devices with CSAM and submit a tip about it?

lamontcg 4y ago
I keep posting this objection on every single one of these articles. It is weird how supposedly techno-savvy people can't spot how easy this would be. But I'd think it would look more like an alternative to murder-for-hire when ruining someone else's life and throwing them in jail would be sufficient. Get someone else to pay reasonably big money to actually do it and not just threaten it. This may have happened already and some middle aged dude caught with CSAM is crying about how he's been framed--only he really has been framed. But nobody believes him, because nobody believes a sex pervert. It seems like a great way to me to put out a 'hit' on someone because it can be done from across the world without leaving any physical traces, with the actions taken across national borders, and much less likelihood of the cops being able to do anything about it, even if they do detect it and the person winds up going free. Agencies like the CIA may also be able to exploit this against foreign politicians and public figures they don't like.
- ajb 4y ago
  Well yes, that's what I though 20 years ago. But I've never seen a report of actual framing of someone via CSAM. gung-ho police mistaking innocent nude kid pics, yes. Criminalisation of sexting by teenagers, yes. But framing? Haven't seen it reported. There are two reasons I guess. One is that pedophilia is the epitome of evil in our society and even career criminals would find handling CSAM off putting and risky. The second is that if you can hack someone, there's easier ways of taking their money. Stealing their credit cards being the obvious one. Money motivated criminals always go by the easiest route. That doesn't rule it out. If we get an uptick in cyberwarfare, I wouldn't be surprised to see this tried, because 'authority says its okay to do this' is an effective
  - insta_anon 4y ago

api 4y ago

It’ll get worse when it becomes obvious that on device scanning is unenforceable without control of the device. Next up will be a ban on unsigned apps and independent app stores and/or an outright ban on encryption. The EU is about to become as bad as China or perhaps even worse if this stuff goes forward.

quazar 4y ago

The title page states: > Text with EEA relevance So it's not only EU, but basically whole Europe.

Macha 4y ago

As with the UK internet filters, the next step will be "Oh, so we have all this infrastructure already, we should extend it to other forms of illegal content, like piracy, DRM circumvention, etc"

ulzeraj 4y ago
This. I'm pretty sure I've read COVID contract tracing data being used for other purposes somewhere out there.
tluyben2 4y ago
Was there so much crying about the UK ones or was everyone obsessed with covid? During covid the uk spent a lot on similar (and I think worse) tech? Maybe the uk will license it?
- Macha 4y ago
  The biggest outcry over the UK one was people's need to contact their ISP to be added to a list to access legal porn, which may have overshadowed the rest of the points. This was a while before covid and has largely moved to just being accepted to my understanding.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    During covid there were these ‘contests’ [0]. And there was more (will try to find). [0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/18/uk-names-five-projects-its-funding-for-csam-detection/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/18/uk-names-five-projects-its...

yedpodtrzitko 4y ago

When all you have is We Need More Surveillance, everything looks like Because Terrorism / CSAM.

DeathArrow 4y ago

Surveillance is for children. Search without warrants is to keep us safe from drugs. War is for peace and democracy. How much can politicians, activists and beaurocrats pervert the truth?

tluyben2 4y ago

Are they cooperating with the UK; seems there were a lot of requests for proposals from them during covid with millions attached to scan e2e connections and other csam measures.

35803288 4y ago

I'll be brief. All chats, calls and emails by EU MPs should be public. Then and only then, they could pass this monstrosity.

weddpros 4y ago

Incest is the massive child abuse elephant in the room, and listening to our communications won't help those millions of children who suffer. Almost 7 million in France (1). I'm disgusted. I'm pretty sure when they say "one child in 5,6 or 7", it's really incest in 90-99% of cases, not some internet pedophile they claim to catch. They won't protect children with that law, because it's not the right law to fight child abuse. [1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1231341/nombre-victimes-inceste-france/ https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1231341/nombre-victimes...

cryptonym 4y ago
Basically 1 person out of ten? That's frightening. Statista says it's an estimation but all information about source and methodology is behind a paywall.

worstenbrood 4y ago

This will push "criminals" further away from the common applications and they'll start using their own (forks?) and setup their own servers. Then there is no control at all anymore.

belter 4y ago

Recent discussions "European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341249 "Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368

wiz21c 4y ago

are there groups in europe that plan to make a public protest ? I'd like to join.

baud147258 4y ago

didn't we already discuss this yesterday and the day before?

encrux 4y ago
And we should keep discussing it in the days to come, until this topic never has to come up again because it's not being proposed anymore.

brainzap 4y ago

And all the energy and effort and money doesn’t even help against child abuse.

Tozen 4y ago

What's the logic with this? So, everyone is a suspect, who must be under constant and continual surveillance. You are guilty, until you can prove that you are innocent.

nbzso 4y ago

My goto solution since Apple CSAM fiasco: 1. Manjaro on office computers. 2. MacOS Catalina with Little Snitch for designers. 3. Air-gapped MacOS Mojave for testing and designers. 4.Limited smartphone usage to banking apps and phone calls. 5. Using dedicated camera for photography, if uploaded - metadata cleaning. 6. Serious offline book, movies, articles archive. 7. No cloud services. NAS only. 8. Limited social media activity, 20 minutes of Twitter, similar usage for Hackernews. 9. No connections to internet without active VPN. 10. Using internet primary for work.

imchillyb 4y ago

If you /truly/ believe that this is about CSAM, you've got your head firmly entrenched up your own ass. This is -yet another- power grab by The State; that's all this is. Every human on earth should be firing the SoBs that suggest these things. Every single legislator that champions these types of privacy invasion should be fired; period. Their names are on a big list now. Fire these assholes.

insta_anon 4y ago

Anyone who thinks that this is really about protecting children should look into how the catholic church, who has a long long [0] history of abusing children in Europe, is treated. If governments wanted to fight child abuse they could easily start there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

kornhole 4y ago

How can they scan messages on my xmpp server using OMEMO e2ee?

MattJ100 4y ago
They can't. They just want to make it illegal for you not to scan them if they decide you are a communication provider and they serve you with what they call a "detection order". If you receive such an order, you have to follow the scanning rules they have laid out.
- kornhole 4y ago
  Thanks. I think it will be a little hard to enforce. I believe tens of thousands of XMPP and Matrix servers are currently running, and they are proliferating. Matrix protocol management is centralized giving authorities a place to apply pressure, but people can still create their own implementations of the standard choosing to include this or not.
  - zaik 4y ago
    > tens of thousands few hundreds in the federation tops

taylorius 4y ago

Don't get me wrong, the EU never met a piece of snooping legislation they didn't like, but the fact that the top part of the page is trying to sell me some encrypted email address makes me wonder about the article's editorial integrity...

one-red-cent 4y ago

How do we stop this?

encrux 4y ago
> How do we stop this? I am not sure, honestly. I remember the Article 13/17 protests. To me it seemed like even though thousands of people went to protest, they simply did not care. And back then, it was about Copyright. Now, a group of people would have to protest against a proposal that's supposed to "protect the children". I can already see what populists would do to any group. In the end, it all boils down to education (raising awareness), protesting (and talking to those who want to understand) and electing officials who care about the people.

zrosandic 4y ago

So it seems that no one should use anymore any "digital", e.g. mobile, mail or whatever "over the wire" way of communication. I was always worried about communicating that has any surveillance. My own stuff should be my own things. We should use older way of communication between us on daily basis and just occasionally use the "over the digital media" communication for quick agreement on person to person or person to group meetings. Anyway, all this gone so far that we really do not need digital way of communication, sharing things. The things like Facebook are crap. The peoples are not digital, they are physical beings and the way we should interact is out of the "digital world".

mensetmanusman 4y ago

CSAM = hash checking There is no way to verify that a hash is actually checking for CSAM. It can be used for anything by any future government good or bad. E.g. an Austrian musician was recently imprisoned for 10 years for composing/producing pro-Nazi songs. A hash check could find anyone who listened to the music (even reporters curious to listen to what they are reporting on.) CSAM is a useful vehicle to get this technology deployed since no one is pro CSAM.

ernirulez 4y ago

EU is a hidden and well thought dictatorship, disguised as a democracy with values where everybody who complains and says otherwise is marked as an enemy. An autocracy full of useless burocrats who live out of citizens taxes