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