The EU wants to scan every message sent in Europe. Will that really make us safer?
Lawmakers argue that mass surveillance will help to protect children. But the implications for our privacy and security are staggering.
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‘The idea is for every digital platform – from Facebook to Signal, Snapchat and WhatsApp – to scan users’ communications.’ Photograph: Artur Marciniec/Alamy.
In my 20 years of being a reporter, I have rarely come across anything that feels so important – and yet so widely unnoticed. I’ve been following the attempt to create a Europe-wide apparatus that could lead to mass surveillance. The idea is for every digital platform – from Facebook to Signal, Snapchat and WhatsApp, to cloud and online gaming websites – to scan users’ communications.
This involves the use of technology that will essentially render the idea of encryption meaningless. (...)
Cybersecurity experts have already made their opinions clear. Rolling out the technology will introduce flaws that could undermine digital security. (...)
And the question of whether circumventing encryption to scan our personal data would benefit child protection online remains a contested one. (...) “Encryption is key to protecting kids as well: predators hack accounts searching for images.”
The great concern, of course, is that states that acquire the power to order the scanning of our messages searching for child abuse content will also use those abilities for nefarious ends. In a joint opinion about the CSAM regulation proposal, the two key European data protection watchdogs have warned that in practice the legislation “could become the basis for de facto generalised and indiscriminate scanning of the content of virtually all types of electronic communications of all users in the EU”. (...)
“The security and intelligence community have always used issues that scare lawmakers, like children and terrorism, to undermine online privacy.” (...)
At the moment, the legislation is stalled due to a blocking minority of EU member states. (...) But no one doubts that soon there is going to be another attempt.
It is this persistence to push through regulations that could make EU citizens less safe online that makes the general absence of progress on other actual growing cybersecurity threats in Europe so frustrating. (...)
It seems like many policymakers in the EU want to prioritise a controversial law that could lead to more surveillance and worsen digital security, instead of more straightforward solutions that would create a safer internet. (...)
Tags: #english #eu #european union #mass surveillance #surveillance #csam #child sexual abuse material #internet #child abuse #data protection #encryption #messenger