[inigyou]

I can't actually think of a good reason that the law should prohibit a company from having the option to automatically scan private messages for CSAM. Can you?

Certain implementations may fall afoul of data protection laws however.

[AngryData]

Because they shouldn't be scanning private messages indiscriminately no matter for what. Lets rephrase it and look at it from "private companies will scan their users private messages for evidence of crimes and report people to police." Where is the limit here? I think it is naive to assume this will stop at csam and will soon be used as a judicial bludgen to extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever care or know about.

[StanislavPetrov]

>extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever care or know about.

With the massive, byzantine web of local, state and federal laws everyone is violating numerous laws and regulations all the time. The goal here isn't to arrest everyone all the time for petty crimes and regulatory violations, it is to give the ability to the powers-that-be to select anyone engaging any frowned-upon behavior and pull up a list of legal violations that can be used to silence and/or imprison them. Activists, protesters, political opponents, people who are against whatever latest war the government chooses to engage in or speaking up against "chat control" or whatever the latest Orwellian government seizure of power is will be the ones who are targeted. The end game, which we are rapidly approaching with the elimination of privacy and individual autonomy, is totalitarianism.

[inigyou]

Has this happened before?

The NSA wiretaps all phone calls - do they extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever know or care about?

Microsoft has your browsing history - we know this because of the recently unsealed court case. Do they do it?

Facebook already ignores this law and scans the content of all private messages anyway. Are they doing what you predicted?

I don't think even the actual Stasi was stopping people at random for petty crimes, right?

[rowanG077]

I absolutely believe that if the NSA wants something from you badly enough and has the dirt to blackmail you than they will do it.

[NeuNeurosis]

So you specifically are rebutting the petty crimes however the real risk is leverage that the government and orgs gain by having asymmetrical access to information that no one else does at scale. This can be used for a variety of reasons but see below some examples of internal corruption by employees and what I would argue is the exact misuse of this power to gain political leverage. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/nsa-staff-used-spy-... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/prospect-blackma...

These are what leaked. Which is to say that it is very naive to assume that large powerful organization is not going to use its power for gain.

Microsoft and Facebook both use the scanning to network your connections and to build profiles of users to better manipulate your behavior. Hence the Cambridge Analytica Scandal let alone what we dont know about.

Why hand over power to these super powerful and large orgs? What do we supposedly gain as a society? I mean look at flock and Palantir, all it takes is for the political winds to change and the power is there because of these bills.

[inigyou]

Yeah it's a risk. But if X is happening right now and Y is not happening and you claim Y happens whenever X does, you really need to explain why the current situation is different or your argument falls apart.

[inigyou]

It says they may do that. It doesn't say they have to - we all know which messengers are the secure ones.

[rightbyte]

A good reason might be that you don't want your private messages to be scanned by any third party in a conversation...

[inigyou]

Then don't send them over Facebook - with or without this law

[throw1234567891]

Yeah, or by email, or text message.