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Data shows that the EU's CSAM scanning will not have the intended effect

499 points by starsep 4y ago

sexy_panda 4y ago
krageon 4y ago
- orangepanda 4y ago
  > trumpification (i.e. lies upon lies and speaking as if you have a significant mental problem) Why use both the term and explanation for it? Either the reader knows the term and has to skip the explanation, or skip the term and read just the explanation. When in doubt, using just the longer expression avoids useless noise
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    - mcv 4y ago
      Byzantine is exactly the right word. Weak maybe not; a united EU would be the most powerful economic superpower in the world, and in some ways, the EU really does wield a lot of power, and often for good. But most of the time, the EU is very divided. And sometimes that's good, because it does justice to the diversity of opinion, and sometimes it's unbelievably impractical, because the EU fails to act or acts too slow on things that require more action. But byzantine is absolutely right. It's in a very large part backroom politics. Between democratically elected national governments, but still very opaque, with insufficient checks and balances, with too much access by corporate lobbyists (there was a time when two different factions proposed literally the exact same law independently from each other, which was clearly written by lobbyists).
  - krageon 4y ago
    Because the term is widely used, but after I wrote it I realised not every single reader might know that it means "to speak as if you have brain damage". So I added some explanation, everyone can participate now and some folks might expand their vocabulary.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  - verisimi 4y ago
    The EU is not a democracy. Its not even a 'representative democracy' which is what I think you mean. It's a technocracy, officials are selected.
    - pfortuny 4y ago
      Exactly. This is something Americans need to understand. The European Commission is managed by the governments, citizens do not vote for their members.
      - rob_c 4y ago
        Yep, and this is one of the major sticking points among the educated people in the UK who voted for brexit. This may sit well with some, but not with others. It has almost certainly created a large political divide close to the philosphical lines of the role of govenment being either to rule or to govern.
    - paganel 4y ago
      And to put this into perspective, the European Parliament doesn't even suggest/propose laws that will have any actual effect on the people that have voted for them (leaving aside for a moment the fact that almost no-one knows who he/she votes for when it comes to the European Elections), it's the un-elected European Commission and the European Council that does that, the European Parliament acts just like a rubber-stamp entity. This came as a surprise to me because I have only learned about it recently (during the last year or so), even though I've been voting in the European elections ever since my country joined the EU (in 2007). And I liked to think of myself as reasonably well-versed when it comes to politics, and, as such, I'm pretty sure the majority of the European electorate doesn't know that basic thing either. I mean, it's the European Parliament, no? They're the ones who suggest and propose laws, no? That's why we elected them there, no?
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  The commission existed far longer and especially these policy decisions by UvdL and in general these surveillance ambitions. These lies were very well established long before any Trump. He is just the exaggerated parody of it. Also a reason why his followers don't care about when he lies. It is business as usual in politics and especially around security legislation.
- rob_c 4y ago
  I would hardly call this trumpficication. That is reading left/right politics on people's deamand for action on a complex issue to something irrelevent. The closest you can even make a comparator here is that it's a loss of freedom from the whole vs from a very large "minority". Please don't view all politics through the same lense or else you end up worse than those you seek to condemn. This is more akin to the fact that US military police the bases in the UK for internet tapping and UK military in the US to justify that we're both spying on each-others citizens which makes it "OK".
  - philjohn 4y ago
    It's populism - "here's a terrible complex problem, but it's ok, we have a simple solution that you can understand!" It doesn't matter that the complex problem doesn't actually have a simple solution, and that the simple solution won't solve it, and worse, will end up in overreach.
    - rob_c 4y ago
      The EC is not a simple solution to a problem, neither is intercepting all internet traffic a simple, popular, or proven effective solution for anything. Other than invading people's privacy post arrest. As I've said if all you have is a hammer...
- tomp 4y ago
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
I'm going to slightly modify and repeat comment of mine I wrote here on another post for the same topic: According to the DKSB (Deutscher Kinderschutzbund) [1], encryption barely plays a role when it comes to the distribution of CSAM [2]. In short: DKSB is not in favour of this. You know, the people that probably know what they are talking about when it comes to the protection of children, unlike the politicians who are trying to force this through. The politicians which only really talked to salesmen of surveillance software [3] about this and never really consulted any independent people with expertise in tech, privacy or the protection of children [4]. Because this was never, at any moment, about protecting children. [1]: https://www.dksb.de/en/home/ https://www.dksb.de/en/home/ [2]: https://www.eu-info.de/dpa-europaticker/316232.html https://www.eu-info.de/dpa-europaticker/316232.html [3]: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-hollywood-star-lobbies-the-eu-for-more-surveillance/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho... [4]: https://edri.org/our-work/private-and-secure-communications-put-at-risk-by-european-commissions-latest-proposal/ https://edri.org/our-work/private-and-secure-communications-...
- spupe 4y ago
  I'm usually on the fence between gross incompetence and straight out deception as the cause for these proposals, but in this case I'm convinced of the latter.
  - nelox 4y ago
    History is replete with those who preach morality and act otherwise.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      With the mandate from Heaven out of fashion in most (ahem, one glaring example) democracies, there is always think of the Children.
- numerik_meister 4y ago
  You got it right. Lots of people here think this is some sort of big conspiracy by lizards to build a surveillance state. In truth, it is simply software companies that have surveillance products to sell lobbying the government. Source: at my German uni there are many recruitment drives from these entities
mcv 4y ago
This is a very well written article that justifies its criticism of the EC's proposal with facts and numbers. Based on this, it really does look like child abuse is merely used as an excuse for more general surveillance.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  This is thanks to the woman (Ursula von der Leyen) who accepted the spread of child pornography (blocking CSAM results, *no* rule whatsoever to have the content deleted which was easily possible) while lying about almost everything, to push her surveillance agenda while she was in Germany. It’s just more of the same in the EU.
  - stephen_g 4y ago
    Isn't it a poor reflection on our institutions when somebody like this can fail so much but be promoted into such important positions? I'm not super familiar with EU or German politics, but literally everything I've heard about von der Leyen's efforts in past positions has been extremely negative and make it seem like she's demonstrated little but extreme incompetence...
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Despite living in Berlin, my grasp of politics is also terrible. However, while I can’t say either way if she’s good at other things or not, the headlines aren’t going to answer that either way — news only covers emotionally charged events, and outside science, tech, and weather forecasts, that in turn makes everyone look bad most of the time.
      - _vbnz 4y ago
        But the EU is super conservative - e.g. banning gene edited crops (now available in Brexit Britain at last - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61537610 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61537610 ), the ridiculous cookie laws and GDPR restrictions, etc. Go live in the south of Germany and see how conservative it is - no card payments, little online delivery, a huge amount of bureaucracy, etc. And the EU forces that sort of bureaucratic conservatism on the whole of Europe, even though some countries like the UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, etc. are much more liberal and technologically progressive.
concordDance 4y ago
The clickbait headline put me off, but it's actually quite well reasoned.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I think it is fair to suggest a lie if the topic is surveillance of text chats. For a discussion you have to meet people eye to eye.
zeroth32 4y ago
verisimi 4y ago
Every natural right can be revoked in the name of 'safetyism'. And this is what government want - they want to be the arbitrators of rights and law. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/23179/safetyism https://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/23179/safetyism
- sph 4y ago
  Governments have found that they can strip away any form of privacy from us just by saying they're doing it for the Children. No-one with nothing to hide would protest again Child Pornography laws, now would they? Is there a way of fighting this trend, without exposing oneself to this very effective way of cancelling you and destroying your life? I feel we're powerless to stop this.
  - red_trumpet 4y ago
    > No-one with nothing to hide would protest again Child Pornography laws, now would they? There is lots of opposition to the recent proposal of the EU. This article being part of it. Even Nancy Faeser, the German minister of the interior opposes it[1]. [1] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-messenger-ueberwachung-duerfte-an-deutschland-scheitern-a-61338f80-839f-4798-b8d9-180e7a5bb711 https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-me...
  - inthegreenwoods 4y ago
pfortuny 4y ago
I just want to point out that lots of the sexual abuse of children are by the child's parent(s) (mostly the father, obviously). This is something that is not taken into account and for which any "communication surveillance" policy is useless. But nobody tries to assess this because, yes, the aim is not the children. It is power.
- teddyh 4y ago
  > mostly the father, obviously Why is that obvious?
  - pfortuny 4y ago
    From a historical point of view, and because males have less control over their sexual behaviour. I was distinguishing between father and mother, should have said so. I was not referring to relatives living out of home, as they would need some form of communication to set up their encounters, probably.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - the_other 4y ago
      I'd argue the abusers have more control over their behaviour, not less. They have chosen to act this way because they fear no reprisal.
      - pfortuny 4y ago
        No, that is not the definition of control, sorry. I am not trying to downplay their responsibility, honestly, I am just trying to speak properly. And that is just a biological fact.
        smolder 4y ago
        This "biological fact" about men having less control over their sexual behavior is new to me. I hate to do the "citation needed" thing, but where are you getting this from? What's the empirical evidence? Do you mean because women pick their mates or something like that? The males have to attract them with displays of plumage?
arlort 4y ago
So, laudable intent because some of the articles in the proposed regulation are dumb beyond measure But it doesn't help their credibility that they made an entire article debunking the wrong entity Of the three claims they "debunk" only the 90% of content being hosted in the EU was a claim made by the EU commission, specifically in 2020 by Johansson, the data seems to come from an NGO called Internet Watch Foundation [0] and it does seem unlikely (from a quick glance I think the 90% claim is about content reported within europe, which makes the statement more likely. But in any case it wouldn't matter because for the critical pieces of the legislation it's not a claim that would justify the measures anyway) But in the other two points the website is constantly referring to this website: https://human-rights-channel.coe.int/stop-child-sexual-abuse-in-sport-en.html https://human-rights-channel.coe.int/stop-child-sexual-abuse... and acting as if the Eu commission authored it. The issue is that this website is hosted and authored by the Council of Europe (hence the coe.int domain), an entity entirely disjointed from the EU, of which the EU institutions aren't even a member. This is confusing to people because there are two organizations (European Council and Council of the European Union) which are part of the EU While the intent of the article is laudable and the scanning parts of the regulation have got to go the "Trumpiest" part of this whole thing is the fact that this website made a whole debunking article based on such thorough research that they didn't even notice they were getting the subject of the debunking wrong (on the positive side it looks like the german government also agrees, so the chances of those parts going away in amendments increased significantly [1]) [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/europe-is-worlds-largest-host-of-child-pornography-advocacy-groups-say/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/europe-is-worl... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-messenger-ueberwachung-duerfte-an-deutschland-scheitern-a-61338f80-839f-4798-b8d9-180e7a5bb711 https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-me...
GaelFG 4y ago
Living in France, the lie is also obvious for a very sad reason : we aldready don't do anything significant in case of a majority of 'obvious' child abuses (sex related or not, that's not even the point). I know a fair amount of social worker whom sadly report that in a lot of child education place they know about A LOT of abuse, and a non negligible (and mental burden inducing) part of the work is to do triage, because they know they get (the number are made up) 50 report per week, but they only can 'investigate' about 20, and even if the 20 are really worrying, they can only launch action for 3 to 5, any more would overflow the dedicated services. And that's not they are lazy, investigating is really complicated (and often not even worth, the main goal is to help the victim, no chasing culprits) and acting worse. You are pretty sure some girl in bad social context is being abused ? with whom do you send her living ? the maybe abusing father ? The probably violent alcoolic uncle or the nice but drug dealing older brother (who maybe is not ready to support her education even with a little financial help) ? That can seems parodic but I've seen real conversations like that. The idea public services who cannot aldready read all the professionally redacted reports will suddently became omniscient because they can read my discord server private channel is funny. Hope some representative will jump on the occasion to request more social worker founds to treat the case we aldready know about.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  The UK was even worse in this regard, with asian sex gangs grooming kids while the police knew about it and choose to ignore it to not look racist for targeting minorities with dark skin. This move is all about surveillance and has nothing to do with keeping kids safe.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    Might be worth noting that the word "Asian" in the UK refers to what in the US would be called Indians. (And, in the details, the people in question here would actually be Pakistanis.)
    - Joeboy 4y ago
      Are Pakistanis considered Indian in the US?
spupe 4y ago
It's so primitive that laws can be proposed without any proper numeric estimate of their possible impact. How many Europeans would be ok with a draconian surveillance mechanism if they knew we would be preventing only a handful of abuses?
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  I wouldn't be okay with a draconian surveillance mechanism even if it literally righted every wrong in the world.
- isolli 4y ago
  The same happened with laws instituting vaccine passports (at least in France). They were not backed by any projection of the number of hospitalizations avoided or lives saved.
espadrine 4y ago
I don’t like this line of argument: it has weak knees for 3 reasons. 1. They question the “1 in 5 children are abused” figure. That is fair: it seems tremendous at first sight. But the real figure of 1 in 10 that they reveal is very close and similarly shocking… 2. They emphasize that children know their abusers. But then imply that scanning chat messages cannot help in this situation. There is an obvious retort: abusers can abuse children in their local community and share images of their abuse online. Catching that sharing can identify them and stop them. (I cannot see any statistics on how many, among abusers, actively share things about it online. Intuitively, it would be a low percentage, but that argument is not used.) 3. They calculate that police surveillance orders were only issued for 0.1% of abuse cases, implying that they do it so little because it is ineffective. But the obvious retort is that they do it so little because they have no grounds to do so. “A chat sent from this person’s phone tripped the detector” is a reasonable justification. (I expect there are some much more obvious ways to have that justification which are poorly tapped, like confidential school reporting. But that is not part of the argument.) The fundamental argument should be that abusers are listening to the EU too. They will gear up. There is nothing anyone can detect in encrypted base64 sent by chat or other means. Meanwhile, any weakness created by this system will be turned into abuse imparted on the innocents, like sharing to an unwitting victim a zipped adversarial image of a prairie whose pixels were flipped until it triggered the detection. Overall, that, along with a possibly inadequate false positive rate given the rarity of real abusers 1) actively sharing and 2) doing so insecurely, it is possible that this system would cause more victims than it would help.
- josefx 4y ago
  > “A chat sent from this person’s phone tripped the detector” is a reasonable justification. A black box detector that similar to a trained drug dog will bark on command. Last time a secret internet block list pushed by von der Leyen was leaked it became clear that they wont limit this stuff to child protection and will do their best to keep the actual criteria used secret. Just mentioning the name von der Leyen in a chat might get you on a list. It is times like these where I would love to have the GDR back, a place where we could just drop of all the crazy Stasi wannabees.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
rob_c 4y ago
But if you have nothing to hide it will save you from yourself... "Think of the Children" has been the immoral rallying cry after it worked so well in the UK for passing several 5-eyes compatible laws into power will little resistance. The message poltically became that we will accuse you of putting childrens lives at risk if you object to this overly complex law that you as a politician likely don't understand.
mjburgess 4y ago
I disagree with the policy, but this article is far less well-thought than other commenters think. * That child abuse is largely familial is irrelevant. It is precisely long-term child abuse which becomes CSAM. * That 10% of children are abused is a large figure. That, now, c. 70% of CSAM is children generating their own material (using presumably scannable devices), provides a significant justification for scanning those devices. * That police forces are ineffective at combating both abuse and CSAM is irrelevant. Government's ability to prioritise child abuse in policing is presumably sensitive to its effectiveness, and other policing priorities. If the EU could pass a tech regulation law to cut down a vast amount of online CSAM, then why wouldnt they? * The government isnt a unified entity, like a person, with some coherent set of priorities. Speaking of it this way will always induce some paranoia. The police's priorities, EU's tech groups, EU states, EU police forces, etc. are all different orgs with different, incoherent, actions. I think the issue of children now being the major generators of CSAM here is perhaps the key one.... I suspect there's a counter-proposal here which requires children's devices to have optional software on them.
hericium 4y ago
> Data shows that the EU's CSAM scanning will not have the intended effect. The intended effect is a totalitarian surveillance. Children are (ab)used by the EU Commission as a pretext which nobody would want to argue with.
kkfx 4y ago
It's obvious to anyone that mass surveillance is not against crime BUT to commit larger crimes, like dictatorship and oppression, like homogenization of humans destroying the mechanism keep us evolving etc. The point is: how many, understood that, decide that's about time to say STOP, pretending immediate arrest and trial for crimes against humanity, attempted coup, high treason, embezzlement etc to our formal politicians and their private-sector shoulder? For what I see very few. At that point, missing Citizens, we can't have Democracy, so at that point it's perfectly legit morally consider certain level of ignorance like a sort of soft-crime and so pushing toward a new neofeudal society where the cohort of Citizens abuse the crowd of subjects, like our oppressors do, for Citizens interests. Of course it's not easy, but that's is.
_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
Fortunately, this will very likely not pass (at least as is). Germany already announced they would block it. https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-messenger-ueberwachung-duerfte-an-deutschland-scheitern-a-61338f80-839f-4798-b8d9-180e7a5bb711 https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-me...
- x1001 4y ago
  Judging em by the works, not by the words. The good sounding came too often at first, then nailed on the other with spontanious amnesia.
langsoul-com 4y ago
I think someone wrote about the 4 horseman of the apocolyse. Where first it was using terrorism to pass suevillence, and now it's CSAM.
ernirulez 4y ago
EU is becoming an authoritarian estate. Made by burocrats to control and manipulate european citizens.
mattiperakyla 4y ago
famously objective and apolitical hackernews having another normal one
ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
All the narratives that justify total surveillance are fake. Now that's a revelation! What next? Hydrologists admit there's some water in the ocean? Chromatologists discover that the sky is color blue?
ernirulez 4y ago
- pfortuny 4y ago
  They sold us "liberty, fraternity, equality" and "peace on earth", and "development for all" and "freedom from totalitarism". That is how we got there. Countries have resigned their power to mint coin *without questioning their citizenship*: this is so amazing and nobody complains. And that is just one of many. Now we will have a military without even questioning whether we the people want to or not!
- _fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
  Every member state can veto every EU commission proposal. The member states are far more powerful than the commission. Also, the commission itself has a representative from each member state. The funny thing about the EU commission is that they get criticized for being dictators and toothless and weak at the same time. Often even by the same people.
  - Aerroon 4y ago
    The problem is the obfuscation. It's another layer of politics to allow political parties to do what they want. This proposal doesn't work locally? Make it an EU level thing. Part of the problem is how a lot of EU countries work. A parliamentary system means that the parties that create the coalition in the national government have a majority in the legislature, therefore they will control the executive. The executive then appoints somebody to the EU commission. These parties then make up EU-level parties too in the EU parliament. In essence, it's the same groups of people that push politics on both levels. This is International Agreements 2.0, where politicians can use external methods to bypass local policymaking.
  - arlort 4y ago
    > Every member state can veto every EU commission proposal This is just false But the commission can't do much without the agreement of parliament and the member states as a collective (even though member states can be outvoted by other member states) and it can't do anything that parliament and the member states as a collective explicitly oppose
tut-urut-utut 4y ago
It's hard to expect honesty from the EU Commission when man looks who sit there. Almost all the EU heads have or had a court process running in their respective countries. I would not believe Frau von der Layen even if she told me 2+2=4.
oblak 4y ago
When someone says they're doing this or that "for the children", you can be 100% sure they're not. Always. The children are the one truly universal excuse for being a horrible piece of shit. Even religion takes a second place. "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him" Cardinal Richelieu, protector of children
sylware 4y ago
The "abused children" are presented as an excuse to setup some "dangerous" technical systems which in the end will be used mostly by the music/movie industry for their own benefit.
dontbenebby 4y ago
I am a (physical) abuse survivor. I cannot emphasize enough that members of the tech policy community must abandon the "think of the children" line of rhetoric to weaken the internet. I don't want to think about your children. I don't want to interact with your children. I've met people who have. People who don't just go out onto the internet to be disagreeable, but truly believe what they are saying. That context collapse of "oh, you're serious?" paired with my sincere view that those folks can get in the ground with Jeffrey Epstein, has been quite the journey. (I crafted the above sentence after extensive therapy, to make it clear: I will not hurt someone just because of their "sexual preference".) But there's a Breaking Bad episode that shows what happens when someone who is not your caregiver decides not to interact -- you will choke on your own vomit and die, or otherwise come to some end that wouldn't have if you hadn't been all alone. (I'm on the autistic spectrum, and a huge prestige TV geek.) You can engineer society to coerce folks, you can invent ever creative reasons to monitor folks who the data shows have always tried to give folks autonomy to make decisions paired with accurate data, but then... well turn on the news. You will what you voted for. Power outages because your independent grid minus federal money rotten then got hit with a superstorm. Condos collapsing because no one did the checks. And the bridge the local tech savvy at risk youth called for help from under may literally fall down. What "civil" society needs to do is believe victims. Testimony is evidence. Value it as much as... computer stuff. Or own that if you decide otherwise, there may be civil unrest. - Greg, from Cub Scout Troop 262.
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  Hi Greg, I'm sorry that you were abused. I assume because you put "Cub Scout Troop" by your signature, that you were abused in Cub Scouts? I imagine there are a bunch of parents that read HN that have their kids in Scouts. So this never happens again to any other kid in Scouting: they should know that the BSA has Youth Protection Training (YPT) which has clear rules that state there should be no private one-on-one contact between adults and children. If anyone's Pack, Troop, or Crew is not following that simple rule, they need to report it. First start at the unit committee, and if that doesn't work, contact the Council. Of course if you suspect abuse and not just a violation of the rules, contact the authorities. Anyone can take YPT (you don't have to be a member of the BSA), just create a "My Scouting" account and take the online training. Additionally, if the unit is chartered by a church, make sure everyone is also taking that church's version of youth protection training as well (The Catholic Church calls it Safe Haven, the Episcopal Church calls it Safegaurding God's Children, etc). As a parent, you should make sure every parent and adult volunteer in your unit is trained. When everyone knows the rules, then we can make sure they are being followed to prevent abuse from happening. The sad fact is that ever since the BSA came out with YPT in the 1970s, children are more likely to be abused in churches and schools than in Scouting. (I'm an adult volunteer in Scouting, and I take this issue very seriously. I want to help make the future a better place, and that starts with our children.)
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
Please correct me with links to corroborating evidence of I'm wrong. AIUI the proposal is to check file hashes of content against a blacklist of known CSAM? The linked website is calling this "total surveillance" and saying the EU are lying and exaggerating. It's total surveillance in the way that looking at the postcode on all envelopes is total surveillance whereby of you send something to a postcode of a known terrorist then it's going to be noticed and may be investigated. On the OP's serving point, a minor email provider not getting a lot of notifications on alerted child abuse investigations compared to the total numbers of children being abused is because there's not enough resources to investigate more cases. Reducing the resources needed per case by catching low-hanging fruit easily with automated and non-intrusive methods is positively indicated by the OP's evidence here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gentleman11 4y ago
Did apple inspire this?
diebeforei485 4y ago
I'm not sure how we get away from this. Something being illegal to possess (because 'possess' means something different back during the days of physical media than it does now with digital files) will always be used to justify these overbearing enforcement mechanisms. Perhaps we should downgrade these from criminal to civil issues except for extreme cases.

499 points by starsep 4y ago

sexy_panda 4y ago

krageon 4y ago

orangepanda 4y ago
> trumpification (i.e. lies upon lies and speaking as if you have a significant mental problem) Why use both the term and explanation for it? Either the reader knows the term and has to skip the explanation, or skip the term and read just the explanation. When in doubt, using just the longer expression avoids useless noise
- nivenkos 4y ago
  - mcv 4y ago
    Byzantine is exactly the right word. Weak maybe not; a united EU would be the most powerful economic superpower in the world, and in some ways, the EU really does wield a lot of power, and often for good. But most of the time, the EU is very divided. And sometimes that's good, because it does justice to the diversity of opinion, and sometimes it's unbelievably impractical, because the EU fails to act or acts too slow on things that require more action. But byzantine is absolutely right. It's in a very large part backroom politics. Between democratically elected national governments, but still very opaque, with insufficient checks and balances, with too much access by corporate lobbyists (there was a time when two different factions proposed literally the exact same law independently from each other, which was clearly written by lobbyists).
- krageon 4y ago
  Because the term is widely used, but after I wrote it I realised not every single reader might know that it means "to speak as if you have brain damage". So I added some explanation, everyone can participate now and some folks might expand their vocabulary.
DocTomoe 4y ago
- verisimi 4y ago
  The EU is not a democracy. Its not even a 'representative democracy' which is what I think you mean. It's a technocracy, officials are selected.
  - pfortuny 4y ago
    Exactly. This is something Americans need to understand. The European Commission is managed by the governments, citizens do not vote for their members.
    - rob_c 4y ago
      Yep, and this is one of the major sticking points among the educated people in the UK who voted for brexit. This may sit well with some, but not with others. It has almost certainly created a large political divide close to the philosphical lines of the role of govenment being either to rule or to govern.
  - paganel 4y ago
    And to put this into perspective, the European Parliament doesn't even suggest/propose laws that will have any actual effect on the people that have voted for them (leaving aside for a moment the fact that almost no-one knows who he/she votes for when it comes to the European Elections), it's the un-elected European Commission and the European Council that does that, the European Parliament acts just like a rubber-stamp entity. This came as a surprise to me because I have only learned about it recently (during the last year or so), even though I've been voting in the European elections ever since my country joined the EU (in 2007). And I liked to think of myself as reasonably well-versed when it comes to politics, and, as such, I'm pretty sure the majority of the European electorate doesn't know that basic thing either. I mean, it's the European Parliament, no? They're the ones who suggest and propose laws, no? That's why we elected them there, no?
raxxorraxor 4y ago
The commission existed far longer and especially these policy decisions by UvdL and in general these surveillance ambitions. These lies were very well established long before any Trump. He is just the exaggerated parody of it. Also a reason why his followers don't care about when he lies. It is business as usual in politics and especially around security legislation.
rob_c 4y ago
I would hardly call this trumpficication. That is reading left/right politics on people's deamand for action on a complex issue to something irrelevent. The closest you can even make a comparator here is that it's a loss of freedom from the whole vs from a very large "minority". Please don't view all politics through the same lense or else you end up worse than those you seek to condemn. This is more akin to the fact that US military police the bases in the UK for internet tapping and UK military in the US to justify that we're both spying on each-others citizens which makes it "OK".
- philjohn 4y ago
  It's populism - "here's a terrible complex problem, but it's ok, we have a simple solution that you can understand!" It doesn't matter that the complex problem doesn't actually have a simple solution, and that the simple solution won't solve it, and worse, will end up in overreach.
  - rob_c 4y ago
    The EC is not a simple solution to a problem, neither is intercepting all internet traffic a simple, popular, or proven effective solution for anything. Other than invading people's privacy post arrest. As I've said if all you have is a hammer...
tomp 4y ago

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago

I'm going to slightly modify and repeat comment of mine I wrote here on another post for the same topic: According to the DKSB (Deutscher Kinderschutzbund) [1], encryption barely plays a role when it comes to the distribution of CSAM [2]. In short: DKSB is not in favour of this. You know, the people that probably know what they are talking about when it comes to the protection of children, unlike the politicians who are trying to force this through. The politicians which only really talked to salesmen of surveillance software [3] about this and never really consulted any independent people with expertise in tech, privacy or the protection of children [4]. Because this was never, at any moment, about protecting children. [1]: https://www.dksb.de/en/home/ https://www.dksb.de/en/home/ [2]: https://www.eu-info.de/dpa-europaticker/316232.html https://www.eu-info.de/dpa-europaticker/316232.html [3]: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-hollywood-star-lobbies-the-eu-for-more-surveillance/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho... [4]: https://edri.org/our-work/private-and-secure-communications-put-at-risk-by-european-commissions-latest-proposal/ https://edri.org/our-work/private-and-secure-communications-...

spupe 4y ago
I'm usually on the fence between gross incompetence and straight out deception as the cause for these proposals, but in this case I'm convinced of the latter.
- nelox 4y ago
  History is replete with those who preach morality and act otherwise.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    With the mandate from Heaven out of fashion in most (ahem, one glaring example) democracies, there is always think of the Children.
numerik_meister 4y ago
You got it right. Lots of people here think this is some sort of big conspiracy by lizards to build a surveillance state. In truth, it is simply software companies that have surveillance products to sell lobbying the government. Source: at my German uni there are many recruitment drives from these entities

mcv 4y ago

This is a very well written article that justifies its criticism of the EC's proposal with facts and numbers. Based on this, it really does look like child abuse is merely used as an excuse for more general surveillance.

Semaphor 4y ago
This is thanks to the woman (Ursula von der Leyen) who accepted the spread of child pornography (blocking CSAM results, *no* rule whatsoever to have the content deleted which was easily possible) while lying about almost everything, to push her surveillance agenda while she was in Germany. It’s just more of the same in the EU.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  Isn't it a poor reflection on our institutions when somebody like this can fail so much but be promoted into such important positions? I'm not super familiar with EU or German politics, but literally everything I've heard about von der Leyen's efforts in past positions has been extremely negative and make it seem like she's demonstrated little but extreme incompetence...
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Despite living in Berlin, my grasp of politics is also terrible. However, while I can’t say either way if she’s good at other things or not, the headlines aren’t going to answer that either way — news only covers emotionally charged events, and outside science, tech, and weather forecasts, that in turn makes everyone look bad most of the time.
    - _vbnz 4y ago
      But the EU is super conservative - e.g. banning gene edited crops (now available in Brexit Britain at last - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61537610 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61537610 ), the ridiculous cookie laws and GDPR restrictions, etc. Go live in the south of Germany and see how conservative it is - no card payments, little online delivery, a huge amount of bureaucracy, etc. And the EU forces that sort of bureaucratic conservatism on the whole of Europe, even though some countries like the UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, etc. are much more liberal and technologically progressive.

concordDance 4y ago

The clickbait headline put me off, but it's actually quite well reasoned.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
I think it is fair to suggest a lie if the topic is surveillance of text chats. For a discussion you have to meet people eye to eye.

zeroth32 4y ago

verisimi 4y ago

Every natural right can be revoked in the name of 'safetyism'. And this is what government want - they want to be the arbitrators of rights and law. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/23179/safetyism https://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/23179/safetyism

sph 4y ago
Governments have found that they can strip away any form of privacy from us just by saying they're doing it for the Children. No-one with nothing to hide would protest again Child Pornography laws, now would they? Is there a way of fighting this trend, without exposing oneself to this very effective way of cancelling you and destroying your life? I feel we're powerless to stop this.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  > No-one with nothing to hide would protest again Child Pornography laws, now would they? There is lots of opposition to the recent proposal of the EU. This article being part of it. Even Nancy Faeser, the German minister of the interior opposes it[1]. [1] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-messenger-ueberwachung-duerfte-an-deutschland-scheitern-a-61338f80-839f-4798-b8d9-180e7a5bb711 https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-me...
- inthegreenwoods 4y ago

pfortuny 4y ago

I just want to point out that lots of the sexual abuse of children are by the child's parent(s) (mostly the father, obviously). This is something that is not taken into account and for which any "communication surveillance" policy is useless. But nobody tries to assess this because, yes, the aim is not the children. It is power.

teddyh 4y ago
> mostly the father, obviously Why is that obvious?
- pfortuny 4y ago
  From a historical point of view, and because males have less control over their sexual behaviour. I was distinguishing between father and mother, should have said so. I was not referring to relatives living out of home, as they would need some form of communication to set up their encounters, probably.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - the_other 4y ago
    I'd argue the abusers have more control over their behaviour, not less. They have chosen to act this way because they fear no reprisal.
    - pfortuny 4y ago
      No, that is not the definition of control, sorry. I am not trying to downplay their responsibility, honestly, I am just trying to speak properly. And that is just a biological fact.
      - smolder 4y ago
        This "biological fact" about men having less control over their sexual behavior is new to me. I hate to do the "citation needed" thing, but where are you getting this from? What's the empirical evidence? Do you mean because women pick their mates or something like that? The males have to attract them with displays of plumage?

arlort 4y ago

So, laudable intent because some of the articles in the proposed regulation are dumb beyond measure But it doesn't help their credibility that they made an entire article debunking the wrong entity Of the three claims they "debunk" only the 90% of content being hosted in the EU was a claim made by the EU commission, specifically in 2020 by Johansson, the data seems to come from an NGO called Internet Watch Foundation [0] and it does seem unlikely (from a quick glance I think the 90% claim is about content reported within europe, which makes the statement more likely. But in any case it wouldn't matter because for the critical pieces of the legislation it's not a claim that would justify the measures anyway) But in the other two points the website is constantly referring to this website: https://human-rights-channel.coe.int/stop-child-sexual-abuse-in-sport-en.html https://human-rights-channel.coe.int/stop-child-sexual-abuse... and acting as if the Eu commission authored it. The issue is that this website is hosted and authored by the Council of Europe (hence the coe.int domain), an entity entirely disjointed from the EU, of which the EU institutions aren't even a member. This is confusing to people because there are two organizations (European Council and Council of the European Union) which are part of the EU While the intent of the article is laudable and the scanning parts of the regulation have got to go the "Trumpiest" part of this whole thing is the fact that this website made a whole debunking article based on such thorough research that they didn't even notice they were getting the subject of the debunking wrong (on the positive side it looks like the german government also agrees, so the chances of those parts going away in amendments increased significantly [1]) [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/europe-is-worlds-largest-host-of-child-pornography-advocacy-groups-say/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/europe-is-worl... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-messenger-ueberwachung-duerfte-an-deutschland-scheitern-a-61338f80-839f-4798-b8d9-180e7a5bb711 https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-me...

GaelFG 4y ago

Living in France, the lie is also obvious for a very sad reason : we aldready don't do anything significant in case of a majority of 'obvious' child abuses (sex related or not, that's not even the point). I know a fair amount of social worker whom sadly report that in a lot of child education place they know about A LOT of abuse, and a non negligible (and mental burden inducing) part of the work is to do triage, because they know they get (the number are made up) 50 report per week, but they only can 'investigate' about 20, and even if the 20 are really worrying, they can only launch action for 3 to 5, any more would overflow the dedicated services. And that's not they are lazy, investigating is really complicated (and often not even worth, the main goal is to help the victim, no chasing culprits) and acting worse. You are pretty sure some girl in bad social context is being abused ? with whom do you send her living ? the maybe abusing father ? The probably violent alcoolic uncle or the nice but drug dealing older brother (who maybe is not ready to support her education even with a little financial help) ? That can seems parodic but I've seen real conversations like that. The idea public services who cannot aldready read all the professionally redacted reports will suddently became omniscient because they can read my discord server private channel is funny. Hope some representative will jump on the occasion to request more social worker founds to treat the case we aldready know about.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
The UK was even worse in this regard, with asian sex gangs grooming kids while the police knew about it and choose to ignore it to not look racist for targeting minorities with dark skin. This move is all about surveillance and has nothing to do with keeping kids safe.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  Might be worth noting that the word "Asian" in the UK refers to what in the US would be called Indians. (And, in the details, the people in question here would actually be Pakistanis.)
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    Are Pakistanis considered Indian in the US?

spupe 4y ago

It's so primitive that laws can be proposed without any proper numeric estimate of their possible impact. How many Europeans would be ok with a draconian surveillance mechanism if they knew we would be preventing only a handful of abuses?

sgjohnson 4y ago
I wouldn't be okay with a draconian surveillance mechanism even if it literally righted every wrong in the world.
isolli 4y ago
The same happened with laws instituting vaccine passports (at least in France). They were not backed by any projection of the number of hospitalizations avoided or lives saved.

espadrine 4y ago

I don’t like this line of argument: it has weak knees for 3 reasons. 1. They question the “1 in 5 children are abused” figure. That is fair: it seems tremendous at first sight. But the real figure of 1 in 10 that they reveal is very close and similarly shocking… 2. They emphasize that children know their abusers. But then imply that scanning chat messages cannot help in this situation. There is an obvious retort: abusers can abuse children in their local community and share images of their abuse online. Catching that sharing can identify them and stop them. (I cannot see any statistics on how many, among abusers, actively share things about it online. Intuitively, it would be a low percentage, but that argument is not used.) 3. They calculate that police surveillance orders were only issued for 0.1% of abuse cases, implying that they do it so little because it is ineffective. But the obvious retort is that they do it so little because they have no grounds to do so. “A chat sent from this person’s phone tripped the detector” is a reasonable justification. (I expect there are some much more obvious ways to have that justification which are poorly tapped, like confidential school reporting. But that is not part of the argument.) The fundamental argument should be that abusers are listening to the EU too. They will gear up. There is nothing anyone can detect in encrypted base64 sent by chat or other means. Meanwhile, any weakness created by this system will be turned into abuse imparted on the innocents, like sharing to an unwitting victim a zipped adversarial image of a prairie whose pixels were flipped until it triggered the detection. Overall, that, along with a possibly inadequate false positive rate given the rarity of real abusers 1) actively sharing and 2) doing so insecurely, it is possible that this system would cause more victims than it would help.

josefx 4y ago
> “A chat sent from this person’s phone tripped the detector” is a reasonable justification. A black box detector that similar to a trained drug dog will bark on command. Last time a secret internet block list pushed by von der Leyen was leaked it became clear that they wont limit this stuff to child protection and will do their best to keep the actual criteria used secret. Just mentioning the name von der Leyen in a chat might get you on a list. It is times like these where I would love to have the GDR back, a place where we could just drop of all the crazy Stasi wannabees.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

rob_c 4y ago

But if you have nothing to hide it will save you from yourself... "Think of the Children" has been the immoral rallying cry after it worked so well in the UK for passing several 5-eyes compatible laws into power will little resistance. The message poltically became that we will accuse you of putting childrens lives at risk if you object to this overly complex law that you as a politician likely don't understand.

mjburgess 4y ago

I disagree with the policy, but this article is far less well-thought than other commenters think. * That child abuse is largely familial is irrelevant. It is precisely long-term child abuse which becomes CSAM. * That 10% of children are abused is a large figure. That, now, c. 70% of CSAM is children generating their own material (using presumably scannable devices), provides a significant justification for scanning those devices. * That police forces are ineffective at combating both abuse and CSAM is irrelevant. Government's ability to prioritise child abuse in policing is presumably sensitive to its effectiveness, and other policing priorities. If the EU could pass a tech regulation law to cut down a vast amount of online CSAM, then why wouldnt they? * The government isnt a unified entity, like a person, with some coherent set of priorities. Speaking of it this way will always induce some paranoia. The police's priorities, EU's tech groups, EU states, EU police forces, etc. are all different orgs with different, incoherent, actions. I think the issue of children now being the major generators of CSAM here is perhaps the key one.... I suspect there's a counter-proposal here which requires children's devices to have optional software on them.

hericium 4y ago

> Data shows that the EU's CSAM scanning will not have the intended effect. The intended effect is a totalitarian surveillance. Children are (ab)used by the EU Commission as a pretext which nobody would want to argue with.

kkfx 4y ago

It's obvious to anyone that mass surveillance is not against crime BUT to commit larger crimes, like dictatorship and oppression, like homogenization of humans destroying the mechanism keep us evolving etc. The point is: how many, understood that, decide that's about time to say STOP, pretending immediate arrest and trial for crimes against humanity, attempted coup, high treason, embezzlement etc to our formal politicians and their private-sector shoulder? For what I see very few. At that point, missing Citizens, we can't have Democracy, so at that point it's perfectly legit morally consider certain level of ignorance like a sort of soft-crime and so pushing toward a new neofeudal society where the cohort of Citizens abuse the crowd of subjects, like our oppressors do, for Citizens interests. Of course it's not easy, but that's is.

_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago

Fortunately, this will very likely not pass (at least as is). Germany already announced they would block it. https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-messenger-ueberwachung-duerfte-an-deutschland-scheitern-a-61338f80-839f-4798-b8d9-180e7a5bb711 https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/chatkontrolle-me...

x1001 4y ago
Judging em by the works, not by the words. The good sounding came too often at first, then nailed on the other with spontanious amnesia.

langsoul-com 4y ago

I think someone wrote about the 4 horseman of the apocolyse. Where first it was using terrorism to pass suevillence, and now it's CSAM.

ernirulez 4y ago

EU is becoming an authoritarian estate. Made by burocrats to control and manipulate european citizens.

mattiperakyla 4y ago

famously objective and apolitical hackernews having another normal one

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago

All the narratives that justify total surveillance are fake. Now that's a revelation! What next? Hydrologists admit there's some water in the ocean? Chromatologists discover that the sky is color blue?

ernirulez 4y ago

pfortuny 4y ago
They sold us "liberty, fraternity, equality" and "peace on earth", and "development for all" and "freedom from totalitarism". That is how we got there. Countries have resigned their power to mint coin *without questioning their citizenship*: this is so amazing and nobody complains. And that is just one of many. Now we will have a military without even questioning whether we the people want to or not!
_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
Every member state can veto every EU commission proposal. The member states are far more powerful than the commission. Also, the commission itself has a representative from each member state. The funny thing about the EU commission is that they get criticized for being dictators and toothless and weak at the same time. Often even by the same people.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  The problem is the obfuscation. It's another layer of politics to allow political parties to do what they want. This proposal doesn't work locally? Make it an EU level thing. Part of the problem is how a lot of EU countries work. A parliamentary system means that the parties that create the coalition in the national government have a majority in the legislature, therefore they will control the executive. The executive then appoints somebody to the EU commission. These parties then make up EU-level parties too in the EU parliament. In essence, it's the same groups of people that push politics on both levels. This is International Agreements 2.0, where politicians can use external methods to bypass local policymaking.
- arlort 4y ago
  > Every member state can veto every EU commission proposal This is just false But the commission can't do much without the agreement of parliament and the member states as a collective (even though member states can be outvoted by other member states) and it can't do anything that parliament and the member states as a collective explicitly oppose

tut-urut-utut 4y ago

It's hard to expect honesty from the EU Commission when man looks who sit there. Almost all the EU heads have or had a court process running in their respective countries. I would not believe Frau von der Layen even if she told me 2+2=4.

oblak 4y ago

When someone says they're doing this or that "for the children", you can be 100% sure they're not. Always. The children are the one truly universal excuse for being a horrible piece of shit. Even religion takes a second place. "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him" Cardinal Richelieu, protector of children

sylware 4y ago

The "abused children" are presented as an excuse to setup some "dangerous" technical systems which in the end will be used mostly by the music/movie industry for their own benefit.

dontbenebby 4y ago

I am a (physical) abuse survivor. I cannot emphasize enough that members of the tech policy community must abandon the "think of the children" line of rhetoric to weaken the internet. I don't want to think about your children. I don't want to interact with your children. I've met people who have. People who don't just go out onto the internet to be disagreeable, but truly believe what they are saying. That context collapse of "oh, you're serious?" paired with my sincere view that those folks can get in the ground with Jeffrey Epstein, has been quite the journey. (I crafted the above sentence after extensive therapy, to make it clear: I will not hurt someone just because of their "sexual preference".) But there's a Breaking Bad episode that shows what happens when someone who is not your caregiver decides not to interact -- you will choke on your own vomit and die, or otherwise come to some end that wouldn't have if you hadn't been all alone. (I'm on the autistic spectrum, and a huge prestige TV geek.) You can engineer society to coerce folks, you can invent ever creative reasons to monitor folks who the data shows have always tried to give folks autonomy to make decisions paired with accurate data, but then... well turn on the news. You will what you voted for. Power outages because your independent grid minus federal money rotten then got hit with a superstorm. Condos collapsing because no one did the checks. And the bridge the local tech savvy at risk youth called for help from under may literally fall down. What "civil" society needs to do is believe victims. Testimony is evidence. Value it as much as... computer stuff. Or own that if you decide otherwise, there may be civil unrest. - Greg, from Cub Scout Troop 262.

MerelyMortal 4y ago
Hi Greg, I'm sorry that you were abused. I assume because you put "Cub Scout Troop" by your signature, that you were abused in Cub Scouts? I imagine there are a bunch of parents that read HN that have their kids in Scouts. So this never happens again to any other kid in Scouting: they should know that the BSA has Youth Protection Training (YPT) which has clear rules that state there should be no private one-on-one contact between adults and children. If anyone's Pack, Troop, or Crew is not following that simple rule, they need to report it. First start at the unit committee, and if that doesn't work, contact the Council. Of course if you suspect abuse and not just a violation of the rules, contact the authorities. Anyone can take YPT (you don't have to be a member of the BSA), just create a "My Scouting" account and take the online training. Additionally, if the unit is chartered by a church, make sure everyone is also taking that church's version of youth protection training as well (The Catholic Church calls it Safe Haven, the Episcopal Church calls it Safegaurding God's Children, etc). As a parent, you should make sure every parent and adult volunteer in your unit is trained. When everyone knows the rules, then we can make sure they are being followed to prevent abuse from happening. The sad fact is that ever since the BSA came out with YPT in the 1970s, children are more likely to be abused in churches and schools than in Scouting. (I'm an adult volunteer in Scouting, and I take this issue very seriously. I want to help make the future a better place, and that starts with our children.)

pbhjpbhj 4y ago

Please correct me with links to corroborating evidence of I'm wrong. AIUI the proposal is to check file hashes of content against a blacklist of known CSAM? The linked website is calling this "total surveillance" and saying the EU are lying and exaggerating. It's total surveillance in the way that looking at the postcode on all envelopes is total surveillance whereby of you send something to a postcode of a known terrorist then it's going to be noticed and may be investigated. On the OP's serving point, a minor email provider not getting a lot of notifications on alerted child abuse investigations compared to the total numbers of children being abused is because there's not enough resources to investigate more cases. Reducing the resources needed per case by catching low-hanging fruit easily with automated and non-intrusive methods is positively indicated by the OP's evidence here.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gentleman11 4y ago

Did apple inspire this?

diebeforei485 4y ago

I'm not sure how we get away from this. Something being illegal to possess (because 'possess' means something different back during the days of physical media than it does now with digital files) will always be used to justify these overbearing enforcement mechanisms. Perhaps we should downgrade these from criminal to civil issues except for extreme cases.