Can the fight against child crime justify a global loss of public freedoms? On Thursday, the Council of the European Union almost responded positively to the question. For “establish rules for preventing and combating child sexual abuse“, the upper chamber studied a draft regulation allowing the systematic scanning of images and links shared by all users of private messaging (from WhatsApp to Signal). If this drastic method would not fail to detect some pedophiles, it constitutes furthermore a direct violation of public rights regarding mass surveillance.
Opening Pandora’s Box
This is also what German MEP Patrick Beyer says: “Even China and Russia have failed to plant cookies in our pockets like the European Union intends to do” he said. Concretely, this project would ask users to consent to images sent via private messaging being examined by an algorithm to detect illegal content.
In addition to the problem linked to individual privacy, this algorithm about which we know nothing could also mark many false positives. For example, if two parents share a photo of their baby in a bath by private messaging, will this content be considered pedophilic and punishable by law? Faced with the scale of such a project and too many unknowns, the vote was finally canceled yesterday by the Belgian presidency, which notably feared a split between those who consider that the project goes too far, and conversely those who find it too lax.
This direct opening towards mass surveillance on the part of the European Union is therefore postponed for the moment, but not canceled for good. Indeed, it is to Hungary, a country known for its ambitions regarding the protection of children, that the presidency of the Council of the European Union will fall on July 1st. It is therefore Hungary which will decide whether or not to hold this vote (but if we are to believe the country’s internal politics, there is a good chance that it will take place).