EU Proposes It’s Own Version Of EARN IT: Effectively Mandates Full Surveillance Of All Messaging & No Encryption
What the actual fuck, EU? While they pretend to be all about protecting privacy, they then push out this bit of utter nonsense: a bill to protect the children" by literally requiring online services scan all messaging all the time. In some ways, the bill is similar to the EARN IT Act in the US, but it's bizarrely even worse than that.
The law requires messaging providers to do risk assessment" and risk mitigation" but if the government feels that the services aren't doing enough (which, of course, they'll claim about everyone), it can get a court to issue detection orders" which require the site to monitor communications for new child sexual abuse material or grooming."
Ah, yeah, good one, EU. Just as the Trumpists of the US have declared anyone who supports the ability to respect the sexual orientation and gender of other human beings groomers" you're now saying websites can be forced to scan private messages for evidence of grooming." I'm sure that won't be abused at all.
There is a lot of language in there to pretend that this will be limited and that it doesn't need to break encryption, but there is no way to do any of this without basically breaking encryption and creating massive surveillance systems that snoop on basically every communication. As the EFF notes in response to this proposal:
The new proposal is overbroad, not proportionate, and hurts everyone's privacy and safety. By damaging encryption, it could actually make the problem of child safety worse, not better, for some minors. Abused minors, as much as anyone, need private channels to report what is happening to them. The scanning requirements are subject to safeguards, but they aren't strong enough to prevent the privacy-intrusive actions that platforms will be required to undertake.
Cryptographer Matthew Green called this proposal the most terrifying thing I've ever seen."
This document is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. It is proposing a new mass surveillance system that will read private text messages, not to detect CSAM, but to detect grooming". Read for yourself. pic.twitter.com/iYkRccq9ZP
- Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) May 10, 2022
It truly is incredible that at the very same time they're claiming that Silicon Valley companies are doing too much surveillance, they're now going to demand much, much more surveillance.
This proposal is still in the early stages, but it could move somewhat quickly. Things that claim they're about protecting the children" often do. However, if this became law, it would do the opposite of protecting children. It would put way more children at risk, by removing the ability for them to have safe and secure communications, including spying on their communications with others in ways that could be massively intrusive. At the very least, it may intimidate children at risk from speaking up or reaching out for help, because those communications will no longer be secure.
What a complete disaster, proposed by clueless bureaucrats who have been told how ridiculous this proposal would be and still decided to push forward with it.