[sbszllr]

“Think of the children” is, as usual, just to get the foot in the door. They use it as a justification, because it works.

Of course CSAM is bad, shouldn’t we do everything in our power to prevent it? If you implement client-side scanning, you will catch some rookies. Some old pervs that don’t know how to use encryption manually, or use Matrix. They will use them to show how effective the system is…

with the exception that it doesn’t work against anyone who knows anything about computers. And I think the regulators know it, they aren’t dumb (imo). It’s, like I said earlier, an excuse to expand the scope of scanning later.

[SgtBaker]

Yes, it's already begun, even though the directive isn't even ratified yet: https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimite...

Europol wants unfettered, unfiltered access to all scanned data, regardless if there's a crime or not.

And they want to inject all of that into their Police AI (which they also want unregulated).

It's going to be awesome future.

[nullfield]

And of course in the released minutes the details of which idiot made which claim are redacted.

So much for the transparency and accountability they’ll no doubt promise will be there for the process of accusations (not that this makes the idea any better, useful, or more palatable), which need not apply to themselves.

[lock-the-spock]

This is standard acces to document request protocol across Europe. You are not going to make your staff targets of the internet mob (see Trump and the names of jurors). You can deduce these were likely actually low level staff (contrary to what the article claims) as names of actual high level staff would normally not be blacked out, although I don't know Europol, as a police body they might have different safety protocols.

[lock-the-spock]

Sorry this is not quality journalism and you misunderstood the message further.

1. The meeting tool place after the commission made it's proposal, meaning that contrary to the way the article sets it up, the meeting couldn't have shaped the proposal. 2. The screenshot of a meeting report states that Europol wants access to the same info as Member States for specific cases, contrary to your summary it doesn't say anything about access to all data. 3. That police agencies want to include further areas into the legislation is not unusual. That doesn't guarantee it will happen, nor does the police body speak for the executive or legislators or represent the EU views as a whole.

I do think the proposals go a bit too far, on the other side the whole tech world assumption that anything has to stay lawless is just absurd. No one can deny there is a problem with pedophile material and to say to protect the purity of free speech all such issues have to stay unaddressed is just a position blind to reality.

[wkat4242]

> No one can deny there is a problem with pedophile material and to say to protect the purity of free speech all such issues have to stay unaddressed is just a position blind to reality.

This is not about free speech at all. Free speech is about the government not censoring public speech and publication. Publishing this kind of material is already an exception of free speech and nobody disagrees with that.

This proposal is about the private communication of all citizens. Not only is it a disproportional measure, it's also ineffective. It will not reduce the demand for this material and will only stop a particular method of distribution. The bad actors will just move to other methods including non-digital or steganography, on unmonitored or hacked devices. Just like the war on drugs doesn't work, they will find a way.

But in the meantime this will deeply undermine the privacy of all people and this tooling will inevitably be used for more purposes than originally proposed. As this linked article shows.

And in order for this to work it will basically have to make FOSS operating systems illegal because as long as the user can modify their OS they can remove this scan. This is one of the reasons I consider it disproportional. Or if implemented on the messaging side only (which is easier to bypass than in the OS), it will make open messaging apps illegal.

[robertlagrant]

> on the other side the whole tech world assumption that anything has to stay lawless is just absurd

This is not the whole tech world's position. Why make up an equally bad opposing position instead of just saying "this regulation is going too far"?

[cudder]

It's so disheartening to follow these. Time after another we hear about some insane Orwellian plot to exploit our deepest secrets. All spun so that the masses will think it's for some noble cause like protecting the children when really it's anything but. And it never stops! Tackle one and it's back a year later in some even more devious form like a fucking Hydra. I'm just so tired I wanna move into a cottage in the woods.

[akira2501]

> shouldn’t we do everything in our power to prevent it?

I'm more concerned about the original abuse. The pictures are obviously an issue as they create a market _for_ abuse, but if you're not targeting the original crime, I don't think you stand a chance of actually improving the world by destroying rights.

[garba_dlm]

the solution, regrettably, already in motion, is (obviously) to make sure less people know anything about computers.

by these two actions combined this anti-freedom garbage (further consolidating and centralizing powers) will work effectively

[teekert]

I very much agree, plus:

Are they thinking of the children when they raid dad's home because a picture of a kids genitals went to a physician for tele-medicine?

Are they thinking of the kids when they come for dad when dad really doesn't like his pictures scanned and self-hosts his infra and uses a Linux based phone?