[BSDobelix]

But now you have governmental overreach and legalized spying on European Citizens by (mostly) US Companies, so i would say that Law is truly binary bad.

Also how the Law was forced is extremely bad.

But hey it's once more proof that the EU is not a democratically spirited institution.

[izacus]

Europe or EU has never looked at data protection against private companies and data protection against government as one and the same. Remember, that even GDPR has carveout for governmental use.

The americans did, but US isn't EU.

[shangofox]

Except it isn't "now" it was a thing since covid.

And it's not overreach it's kinda more of a loose exception to the GDPR which actually allows companies to read messages. Which they would already do without GDPR

[inigyou]

It still remains true that Mark Zuckerberg will get arrested if he is caught using the data for anything other than child porn scans.

[BSDobelix]

Your a dreamer, no one in that position will ever get arrested (in the West) slap on the hand, 100M and the thing is forgotten.

[okamiueru]

I am not sure if the absurdity of that statement is intentional, or a result of just how far the Overton window has drifted.

First of all, private companies shouldn't be given that responsibility to begin with. Meta in particular, has a long history of unethical and immoral usage of personal data. I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business [1]. Given the long list of things Meta has been caught doing, together with the in grand total zero seconds of jail time. I'm genuinely curious as to why you think this would be any different. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already happened, where in some room without windows and a lot of lawyers and business analysts, they have ran models and concluded that the cost of getting caught here is "a good financial decision". Wouldn't be surprised either if it also came with a guarantee of personal protection from prosecution, from NSA and other government entities, in exchange for a hand in that data pipe.

Secondly, for this to carry any plausibility for being motivated by "protect the children" arguments, it requires a minimal effort be enacted on more effective measures, and a measured balance with the cost this comes at. There are very good arguments for why this law would actively harm children. Throw in some Bayesian understanding, and you better have a state of the art system that somehow pretty much never has false positives, nor false negatives, where this was also the only way to detect and avoid said abuse. I don't know the numbers here, but I highly doubt this is a good idea, even with infinite generosity as to good intentions. We've all been children, we've all done stupid things. Now throw in the brilliant and surely-not-to-scar-a-child-for-life situations where parents and strangers looking at something they thought was private, and have a "grown up discussion" about. I shiver at the thought.

Thirdly, and aside from directly harming children in situations where they selves use technology and naively, and unwisely share pictures, consider how many take pictures of their own kids without clothes, because they are normal human beings, who do not consider there to be anything sexual about said depiction. You want to throw law enforcement in the mix here? Child protective services?

Fourthly, consider the possible negative for this abuse. If normal behavior (e.g. children being children, and e.g. normal parents otherwise sharing normal pictures if you are a normal person) can be selectively chosen as being a heinous crime, this should scare anyone, especially consider the political shifting trends towards fascism.

[1]: https://www.creativefuture.org/facebook-scandal-timeline/

[inigyou]

Western Europe is a place where the political structures, for better or worse (mainly worse) still trust people to follow the law. Much EU politics makes more sense with this in mind. They consider a law saying "you may only use this capability to scan for child porn" to be a barrier against other uses, the same way they consider a law saying "you must get the user's consent before setting a tracking cookie" to prevent anyone from setting a tracking cookie without consent. They don't feel a need for hard fences like "chat must be encrypted" or "browsers must disable cookies on every website by default" because they consider the soft law to be an adequate solution.

[BSDobelix]

>I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business.

Woah, that's such a good, on point statement. From Boing, FightClub (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes/?item=qt0479130) to Cambridge Analytica (Meta) and Pegasus as a small sample ;)

[throw-the-towel]

Yeah, I'm not bating my breath for the Silicon Valley Invasion Act.