Fighting pedophilia at the expense of our privacy: The EU rule that could break the internet

Hundreds of academics and engineers and non-profit organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, as well as the Council of Europe, believe that the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) would mean sacrificing confidentiality on the internet, and that this price is unaffordable for democracies.

The European Data Protection Supervisor, who is preparing a statement on this for late October, has said that it could become the basis for the de facto widespread and indiscriminate scanning of all EU communications. The proposed regulation, often referred to by critics as Chat Control, holds companies that provide communication services responsible for ensuring that unlawful material does not circulate online. If, after undergoing a risk assessment, it is determined that they are a channel for pedophiles, these services will have to implement automatic screening.

The mastermind behind the billboards and newspaper exhortations calling on Apple to detect pedophile material on iCloud is, reportedly, a non-profit organization called Heat Initiative, which is part of a crusade against the encryption of communications known in the U.S. as Crypto Wars. This movement has gone from fighting against terrorism to combating the spread of online child pornography to request the end of encrypted messages, the last great pocket of privacy left on the internet. “It is significant that the U.S., the European Union and the United Kingdom are simultaneously processing regulations that, in practice, will curtail encrypted communications. It seems like a coordinated effort,” says Diego Naranjo, head of public policies at the digital rights non-profit EDRi.

Onii-Chan,
Onii-Chan avatar

The question I have is where does the world go from here? I can't foresee a future where these attempts by government to enact a kind of all-encompassing control and monitoring of citizens' lives just suddenly stop and we return to a time when our every movement wasn't watched. It seems like they will just keep trying, taking any pushback as a sign that their social engineering just needs a few tweaks and a little more corporate/media brainwashing before they try it again. The only winners are government and their corporate buddies.

We're entering a world that myself and a not insignificant percentage of humanity are fundamentally incompatible with. I don't see a reason to remain optimistic about the future, to keep building upon what I've got going on, to strive for more, when we're staring down the barrel of a technofeudalist nightmare dystopian future that it seems most people don't give a shit about eventuating because they've "got nothing to hide, and therefore nothing to worry about."

Somebody give me a reason to think things will get better.

SlikPikker,

Revolutions are always sudden, and people always say its impossible right before it happens.

The thing about revolutions is that they spread, and usually very fast.

The domination of Capital and the Centralizing States is no more eternal than the Roman Empire was.

sic_1,

If encryption is outlawed only outlaws will use encryption. That means citizens are made much more vulnerable, business models are made mir difficult and democracy is significantly weakened. Add to what kind of people still want that - the people who will benefit from that. Corrupt despots and criminals.

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I can’t foresee a future where these attempts by government to enact a kind of all-encompassing control and monitoring of citizens’ lives just suddenly stop

The executive in the federal government in the US tried to punch holes in encryption since at least the Clipper Chip in the early 1990s, and it’s been repeatedly rejected. Also, there used to be hard restrictions on export of strong encryption from the US – it had been treated as a munition – and that was removed in the late 1990s. I’m not so sure that there’s some sort of inevitable future Panopticon down the line.

considers

I suppose that, depending upon the structure of a system of government, if there’s enough effort, constitutional amendments can create a high bar for change, as one could guarantee a right to private communication. In the US, it’s quite difficult to change the US Constitution, so anything that goes in there is gonna be pretty difficult to for a government to ignore. If an amendment like that went in, you’d first have to have three-quarters of states agree to back it out. Then have the federal legislature pass a law that previously would have been unconstitutional. It’d be pretty visible.

As it stands, there is no explicit right to privacy in the US Constitution. You do have the Fourth Amendment, and what flows from it, and that can be closely-related to privacy:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

There has been case law based on interpretation of explicit rights that has established various non-explicit constitutional rights to privacy; Roe v. Wade had originally been based on such an interpretation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penumbra_(law)

In United States constitutional law, the penumbra includes a group of rights derived, by implication, from other rights explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights.[2] These rights have been identified through a process of “reasoning-by-interpolation”, where specific principles are recognized from “general idea[s]” that are explicitly expressed in other constitutional provisions.[3] Although researchers have traced the origin of the term to the nineteenth century, the term first gained significant popular attention in 1965, when Justice William O. Douglas’s majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut identified a right to privacy in the penumbra of the constitution.[4]

If an explicit right were authored and then added as a constitutional amendment, that would be a substantial bar.

In contrast, in the UK’s present system of government, there’s fundamentally no way to restrain the legislature in that way; that’s not really a viable route.

The EU presently doesn’t have treaty-level guarantees of privacy either, which is the closest analog to an EU constitution that exists today, but treaty change has a very high bar, and any such change guaranteeing a right would be exceptionally difficult to back out, as treaty change requires unanimity. The flip side, though, is that getting such a right through would also be exceptionally difficult, and I would personally bet that the bar for such a right being added to the EU treaties will not be met, given a unanimity requirement.

The EU does have regulations and directives, like GDPR. Something like that will protect against change in an individual EU member without corresponding change at the confederation level, though that assumes that the concern is specifically about a member state monitoring communications.

Member states may have individual constitutional guarantees related to private communication; the extent and status of those is going to vary, but anything there will have both a local effect and a broader effect on the EU:

  • The EU is able to pass law that mandates member state action that directly conflicts with an EU member’s constitution. However, it is also unlikely to do so, since within that member state’s legal system, the member state constitution is a higher authority for the system of government than the EU. That would cause the member state to immediately be in immediate violation of EU law. Brussels will probably not intentionally create such a situation.
  • So unless EU law is going to specifically create a carve-out for constitutional requirements in member states – as they did for the neutrality exception for the mutual assistance clause in the EU treaties – such a guarantee in one member state will also discourage EU-level legislation that affects other member states. The EU has no restriction on creating such carve-outs, but my guess is that there is probably a desire not to do so. If, say, Italy, Estonia, and Ireland all guarantee a constitutional right to end-to-end encryption, my guess is that the EU will not pass EU-level laws disallowing it.
apis,

Think that people will increasingly become disillusioned with online services, perhaps not because of the erosion of privacy as few seem so interested in that, but from deterioration of experience.

So though they may continue to use the internet for administrative stuff, which governments often had access to anyhow, there might be a return to letters & face-to-face stuff.

Companies pushing AI seems likely to accelerate the disillusion.

interolivary,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

My hypothesis is that “enshittification” isn’t just happening to internet services, but to everything. Prices are going up, and quality is going down at an accelerating pace; the majority of the inflation in the past ~4 years has been due to corporations simply raising prices and blaming it on “the economy”, executive compensation and stock buybacks have gotten completely out of hand (even compared to what’s been going on in the past 30 years) while wages stay at the same level – meaning that everybody except the 1% is getting paid less due to the cost of living skyrocketing.

Honestly it feels like the ruling class has realized that the proverbial shit is going to hit the fan very soon and is scrambling to maximize their wealth and making sure everybody else is worse off so people don’t have too much time to think about what’s going on. Plus they know that increasing inequality will drive people to vote for populists, and right-wing populists are invariably pro-plutocracy despite what they claim to be (and left-wing populists are vastly less popular nowadays, although not completely extinct as eg. Slovakia recently showed)

apis,

Agreed.

Though am not sure it is really planned out so much as there was an insane scramble to both invest in & rely upon a multitude of systems which were unstable & unsustainable, and that now these are fracturing.

Add to that the scramble to get money out before & patch over flaws before it collapses, and we’re hurtling toward very uncomfortable times.

interolivary, (edited )
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

Oh yeah I doubt this has all been planned decades in advance, but it definitely does seem to be the plan now. Also it’s not like this all isn’t a fairly logical consequence of our economic system.

We also have the added bonus of executives realizing that they can replace a huge chunk of their workforce with some shitty “AI” system, either now or in the near future. There’s already many publicized cases of this happening, and many of the examples have been… well, predictable. Like that one eating disorder helpline that replaced its meatbag helpline staff with a barely-tested LLM that gave dangerous advice – but hey, exec compensation went up and it’s surely going to trickle down any day now

dynamo,

Definitely agreeing with the second section. The more i think about this shit, the more i think the only way out of this is violence. But fuck if i know how this should be approached. I’m mostly in a constant panic attack over this. I mean, how tf can i calm down considering the death of freedom and privacy we are marching into, if not there already.

Resethel,
@Resethel@lemmy.world avatar

They won’t get better, hence why security expert start to talk more and more about things like “sous-veillance” or “transparency”. The philosophy behind these being: “if you spy on me, then I should be able to spy on you”. If we know precisely what is being done with our data, and if we can also access the data of the one surveilling us (imagine getting to know the text exchanges of the representatives presenting this bill…) then we’d loose privacy but gain much more freedom in return

nous,

This movement has gone from fighting against terrorism to combating the spread of online child pornography to request the end of encrypted messages

Switching between massively different excuses always with the same goal in mind - to end encryption. They don’t care at all about their excuses or else they would be proposing other ideas that might actually help. But no, all they want is to end encryption and the privacy of everyone online.

trollercoaster,

And the worst of it all is the media cooperating by constantly parroting those lame excuses.

RestrictedAccount,

Anytime a politician (right or left) or national security hawk says “but think a the children” the are coming for your liberty.

CosmicTurtle,

I want to see a data dump of the people who are leading this movement. If they don’t want encryption, let’s see bank account logins, credit card transactions, web browsing logs.

I guarantee you it’s “rules for thee and not for me”.

Kodemystic,

They would be invading the Vatican and chasing Epsteins friends and connections if the powers that be really cared about children. They’re not after pedos, they’re after freedom and privacy.

Tartas1995,

That is how you get burning cars and extremist.

spiderkle,

This has happened in the US too with the patriot act (having all your electronic communication monitored to protect us citizens from terrorist attacks, following 9/11) and we saw how that played out with the prism program. You can’t be opposed to protecting people can you?

Now the EU is trying to couple a law to which you would normally be opposed to (having all your electronic communication scanned to protect children from being abused, following the raids on EU child trafficking rings), with a topic like child protection to which you can’t possibly be opposed to without sounding like a complete psycho-pervert.

Mnemnosyne,

I am always opposed to child protection because 99% of the time in politics, this is precisely what they are doing - trying to make it unacceptable to criticize whatever they’re pushing.

uis,
@uis@lemmy.world avatar

Csar? We need MORE TSARISM!

nyakojiru,
@nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Sadly there is no perfect desition, I would sacrifice privacy to protect child . But There should be always multiple options, not just one . I really hope some genius can find a tech solution were people privacy can be protected and we can also fight atrocities like child abuse.

ReversalHatchery,

This problem is not solved by a technical solution, a backdoor.
It is solved by adding manual reporting functionality to communication systems, and then teaching children to report any such atrocities.

If they cannot decide for themselves, that only means one thing: they don’t know what to do with it, or they don’t trust their caretakers (parents, school personnel and similar parties), which are the actual problems to be solved.

nyakojiru,
@nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Teaching children? Decide themselves? , wtf dude, you don’t have children right ? You can rely this massive issue on that

ReversalHatchery,

Obviously children should not have unsupervised access to internet connected devices until they are capable of deciding for themselves. Are you of the kind that presses youtube into their kids face to just have them calm down?

At the appropriate age, you start teaching them how to appropriately use these devices, and also to let you know if they see something wrong, and when that happens you teach them what to do in that case.
A random person has sent a message invitation? If you nor your children know them, you tell them to decline it.
Someone your kids know has sent them something inappropriate? You tell your kids that it is inappropriate, what to do with it (use the platforms report function, block the person, etc), and to report to you if it happens again.
In multiple cases it is even better if you talk about some of the dangers before the bad thing happens.
That if a website wants access to the cookies, they should always reject what is possible, and that if a website wants them to register, to ask you about it first.

Obviously, they won’t know by themselves, until you teach them. As a parent this is your job, they won’t do that in the school instead of you.
This all should be the most basic things for every responsible parent.

jsdz,

It seems like a coordinated effort

It’s nice to see this getting noticed for once in mainstream mass media.

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m in America and I honestly thought we’d see this kind of FUD here first.

Make no mistake about it though, the governments of the world want to make encryption and other privacy tools solely their domain.

They’ve already done so extensively in China.

Prepare yourselves, for Big Brother is at our doorsteps.

MentalEdge,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

Doing away with encryption is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.

Like what, should we start labeling people criminals simply for writing physical letters with a cipher?

Or maybe we should start opening everyone’s mail, what if someone sent a printout of child porn?

Obviously not. Criminals will simply encrypt anyway, only the rest of us will lose our right to privacy forever.

RestrictedAccount,

Without encryption what will stop them from planting porn.

0x815,

Who benefits from the EU Commission’s mass surveillance law?

A newly-published independent investigation uncovered that parts of the European Commission, specifically the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME), have been promoting industry interests in its proposed law to regulate the spread of child sexual abuse material online.

The investigation also highlights that contradiction that Johansson, the leading Commissioner on the CSA Regulation, has refused to meet with civil society representatives and failed to engage with tech experts – all whilst opening doors for surveillance tech companies.

Arda Gerkens, the Director of Europe’s oldest hotline for children and adults wanting to report abuse Offlimits, shared that none of her attempts to meet with Johansson were successful. For the investigation, she shared that “encryption is key to protecting kids as well: predators hack accounts searching for images” – a perspective missing from Johansson’s analysis of the debate.

barsoap,

The investigation also highlights that contradiction that Johansson, the leading Commissioner on the CSA Regulation, has refused to meet with civil society representatives and failed to engage with tech experts – all whilst opening doors for surveillance tech companies.

That’s exactly von der Leyen’s MO, she’s been doing the same shit in Germany in 2009: Ignore all stakeholders. There’s a reason she’s known as Zensursula.

…the thing though is that I don’t even think it’s a “I want to have surveillance thing” with her – she really does care for the well-being of kids, thing is she’s so set in her approach that she explains away any critique of it as “evil paedophile forces wanting to stop her”. Basically she’s a massive blob of ideology and neurosis when it comes to this topic.

0x815,

she really does care for the well-being of kids […] Basically she’s a massive blob of ideology and neurosis

I do hope I’m mistaken, but I’m afraid the only thing these people (von der Leyen, Johanssen, and many other politicians) are interested in is there own career.

barsoap,

She studied archaeology, then macroeconomics, then medicine and has seven kids – as mother, not father, quite a different thing. Entered politics quite late at the age of 32, no previous membership in a youth organisation. She does come from a heavily political family, though, her father served as PM in Lower Saxony and as a EU civil servant, which is why she grew up in Brussels.

To me it looks more like she tried to get away from politics but it caught up with her.

0x815,

Well, von der Leyen refuses to disclose her own WhatsApp messages (a practice well known from her time as German minister, when the budgets for her ‘advisors’ skyrocketed btw), she and Johansson have been refusing to meet rights activists, scientists, security experts, grass roots organisations, as well as former victims of sexual abuse who are opposing client-side scanning, while they met with US actors and other lobbyists primarily from outside Europe (there is plenty of information across the web as you may know) to push a surveillance mechanism surpassed maybe only by countries like China or Saudi Arabia and a novel by George Orwell.

Maybe it’s an irony of history that the European Commission is a non-elected and thus non-democratic body very much like these nations?

barsoap,

The parliament elects the commission president, then vets the commissioners proposed by the president they just elected, then approves of the commission as a whole. Nothing whatsoever is happening there without the parliament.

That’s bog-standard for a parliamentary system. What’s not that standard, but also not unheard of, is that the head of the executive is proposed by another body, in the EU’s case the council. Which in itself is elected as all member state’s governments are elected.

I get that there’s gripes about the Spitzenkandidat putsch failing, originally S&D and EPP (at least, I think there were others) said “Council, you can propose any candidate you want but we’re only going to elect our candidates”, but ultimately they did not have enough seats to actually force the issue. But honestly would Weber really have been better, he’s a Bavarian, one fault that vdL does not have.

The reason the council proposed vdL is, more or less, Germany saying “hey it’s our turn” (last German in the post was Hallstein, 58-67, both the commission and parliament predate the EU), and as we had a CDU government back then with a domestically unpopular vdL who didn’t even consider being offloaded to the EU a demotion but promotion she was the obvious choice.

0x815,

These ‘political games’ about candidates are bad and it’s not (only) her to blame for, so far I agree. What I criticize is her entire behaviour, from hiding her professional communications to spending taxpayers’ money for her advisors to not even meeting with and listening to people with an opinion other than her own (in that case, not even with victims of sexual abuse). This is not what is expected in a democracy.

barsoap,

In a democarcy, a people gets the government it deserves.

And, well, as said, it could be worse: We could have had a Bavarian Commission President. Imagine Scheuer in that position.

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