An investigation uncovers a web of influence in the powerful coalition aligned behind the European Commission’s proposal to scan for child sexual abuse material online, a proposal leading experts say puts rights at risk and will introduce new vulnerabilities by undermining encryption.
I don’t understand how “client-side scanning” - i.e. an invasive piece of code pushed by OS makers to YOUR computer or mobile device to scan YOUR files without your consent - is even being discussed.
This is tantamount to an Apple or Google rep forcibly entering your house, sitting on the couch next to you in your living room and reporting to the mothership or the police what you watch on TV. People would take to the street if this was mandated by law. Yet they seem to be waiting for the Apple or Google rep to sit on their device and report what files you have in it with complete resignation.
How did we get here? This obscene proposal would have been a major scandal not 25 year ago. Actually it wouldn’t even have been proposed at all. But today it’s on the verge of becoming law! The mind boggles…
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How can you even say that?
This is what baffles me the most: how does anyone even entertain the idea of letting a third-party scan their own files on their own device uninvited? Even if the process is transparent and there’s a 100% fool-proof way of taking care of false positives, the very idea of letting anyone scan anything on my computers in the first place is completely unacceptable!
People would have never deeemed anything like this even remotely acceptable 25 years ago. But in 2023, enough people have internalized the idea enough that this actually has a chance to become law without creating an outrage. I am utterly distressed by what society is willing to accept nowadays.
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Your entire line of thinking hinges on the premise that the politicos (and presumably, whichever oligopolies their do the biddings of) will have their way one way or the other. What you’re saying is, if we don’t make concessions on the client-side scanning and accept some implementation of it, the privacy-respecting tools we have now will be banned.
My question is this: why is any of this inevitable?
None of what’s being proposed here solves any problem. Pedo material can be fought with the legal and technical tools we have now, as demonstrated by the news of entire pedo rings being dismantled, and pedophiles going to jail as a result on a regular basis.
The fact that you’re willing to make compromises on solutions to a fake problem means that you’ve already acknowledged we’ve already lost.
The truth is, if people today were as outraged as people of my generation are over this, this false choice wouldn’t have to be made at all. Things are just fine the way they are today, and you don’t have to give up anything if you don’t assume you’ll have to give something up.
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The problem is that the criminals won’t use something monitored by the police. They aren’t dumb
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Oh, something very similar has been proposed already some time ago, just under the guise of stopping terrorism. That excuse evidently doesn’t work anymore.
Google has been doing it on drive for years now. False positives have been several times reported to the police, despite a human reviewing it
Yeah but that’s different: you entrust files to Google drive. It’s their digital real estate: I expect them to do whatever they want with what you put on it. If you don’t want false-positives, don’t send your files to Google.
But your cellphone or your computer at home is your digital real-estate. It’s your home. I for one do not welcome Google in my home, and I absolutely refuse to let them see what’s inside my home.
Because really, client-side scanning is nothing more than home invasion.
It’s already being discussed to be put in law but people still aren’t rioting. Chat control 2.0 is just this.