EU plan to scan private messages for child abuse meets fresh scandal

https://www.wired.com/story/csar-chat-scan-proposal-european-commission-ads/

by daenney • 3 years ago

296 112 3 years ago

wired.com

fsflover• 3 years ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473

EU Commissioner as double agent of foreign interference (patrick-breyer.de)

WarOnPrivacy• 3 years ago

Same issue but different topic. Earlier was about bad behavior by individual officials. This is discussing bad behavior by the agencies. It includes stuff that wasn't touched on in the earlier article.

nixass• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/hrpes

kelnos3• 3 years ago

What an unfortunate URL...

giantrobot• 3 years ago

Apropos generated path on that URL.

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

Sort of reminds me of the famous "Opinion Polls" segment of Yes, Prime Minster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks

bloopernova2• 3 years ago

Astonishing. The EU was caught using targeted ads in twitter to get support for a very intrusive law.

Smells really bad, but I'm too cynical to believe that anyone responsible will face consequences.

varispeed• 3 years ago

will face consequences.

Probably a bonus will happen to them.

Amezarak• 3 years ago

Make sure to bookmark this for the next discussion where people insist nothing like this can happen in Europe.

BLKNSLVR• 3 years ago

That's the funny thing about tribalism, it's just a different flavour of the same base human corruptibility (or, to use less aggressive wording: opinion, bias, or subjectivity).

The US is no better or worse than Europe, it's just a different alignment of values.

The "better or worse" argument is based entirely on each individual's alignment being closer or further away from one alignment or the other. This will come from personal experience, highly affected by the boundary the individual grew up within - which can affect can ones biases in both directions.

kaba0• 3 years ago

I mean, it didn’t happen.

Obviously the EU is not without fault, but to be honest, I see more negatives around it, especially on HN than warranted.

eigenket4• 3 years ago

Saying "the EU" is wildly oversimplific. A more accurate interpretation (in my opinion) is one particularly stupid EU comissioner (Ylva Johansson, Commissioner for Home Affairs) who is pushing things way beyond her remit.

The EU has mechanisms which can deal with this sort of nonsense, however. The comissioners can't pass laws themselves, only propose them. The EU parliament has to actually vote the law proposed by the commission into law and it seems unlikely for this one to pass.

The EU parliament is directly elected by normal people, and is generally rather more in touch with reality than the commissioners are.

bloopernova2• 3 years ago

You're right, I wish I could still edit the comment to clarify it.

inglor_cz2• 3 years ago

"who is pushing things way beyond her remit."

And who was almost successful in doing so. She still may be successful a year or two from now.

It is as if the EC was a big carousel of special interests where every commissioner takes his/her turn and others help them pass things, on order to be able to pass their own things later.

A classical oligarchy, the ancient Greeks would immediately recognize the problem.

emptysongglass2• 3 years ago

I wish we citizens of countries in the EU would stop bending over backward to apologize and explain away these undemocratic institutions. "Oh but don't worry those unelected officials can't pass laws, just propose them." "Oh but actually this other body is directly elected unlike these other folks." "Oh it's actually democratic because we voted those other folks in who elected them in."

Like c'mon folks. It sucks. It's really bad. We should do something about it and stop falling all over ourselves to explain how it's not that bad. You don't think the actual lawmakers are listening to their advice? Of course they are. They elected those proposers.

This weird defense we keep rallying to is tiresome. It's ok to criticize the EU. It's really not a paradise in any sense of the word and many, many of its constituent countries look far less democratic than the US.

happymellon• 3 years ago

The comissioners can't pass laws themselves, only propose them.

Then what's the point of them?

They are indirectly elected so that they can submit proposals that would normally be political suicide.

who is pushing things way beyond her remit

I completely disagree. She is working exactly how the system is designed.

Europe needs to replace the commission with a democratically elected body. One that is elected in a different way to the parliament to get a different cross section of the population.

However as someone in the UK we have the exact same situation with the House of Lords.

fwungy• 3 years ago

"It's for the children"

Big red flag.

matheusmoreira9• 3 years ago

Yeah. Politicians using children as arguments for total global surveillance is the epitome of bad faith. Leveraging children as political weapons should be considered a form of child abuse.

thesnide• 3 years ago

Mass surveillance to combat terrorism is also making me think if the remedy is not as worse as the evil.

I mean, terrorist are now laughing that they nicely annoyed 99.99% of the population that want to travel by air.

We saw the rise of low cost terror, with a knife in a crowded space.

I predict the "free2play" terror with simply wrongly alerting authorities to evacuate mass touristic areas.

We live in a sad era were everyone is just either too afraid or too envious of his neightbors

throwaway29012• 3 years ago

We should separate anti-abuse laws that don't compromise e2e (like Apple's hash matching) and laws that ban e2e. Once we do it we should fight for one against the other.

If abuse is real and e2e is key to it, taking measures against abuse while keeping e2e is important. Fighting against any measure altogether is immoral

rtkwe3• 3 years ago

What are actual laws you're thinking of that aren't attacks on end to end encryption? All of this is already highly illegal the difficulties are finding and prosecuting the criminals.

throwaway29012• 3 years ago

Finding and prosecuting is the point?

What made people do it before is mental illness. What makes people do it now more and more is additionally profit. The e2e apps and crypto is what drives their profit.

But critically there are ways of keeping e2e without being complicit in crime. Things like Apple's hash matching or requiring all messaging apps to do on device scan are that.

Pretending these compromises are unacceptable because they affect your privacy is a nonce move. You routinely compromise your privacy in much bigger ways in order to live in society, every time you are searched at security or present ID for verification etc, but when it comes to doing anything to help victims who unlike you can't even stand up for themselves you are suddenly the unyielding freedom fighter.

Analemma_• 3 years ago

"Anti-abuse laws that don't compromise e2e" don't exist, the entire concept is impossible ipso facto. Apple's hash matching still requires scanning your plaintext (or plain image, or whatever), which means

1. the "fingerprint" can still be silently updated to look for other things like [the current Power's that Be's definition of] "misinformation",

2. false positives can completely fuck over your life

3. it doesn't even work to prevent CSAM, because there will always be an arms race to improve the anti-fingerprinting measures. The "perceptual hashing" algorithms you've heard about don't actually work at all, they're a lie being pushed by commercial interests.

Those three points mean that even message fingerprinting is unacceptable, full stop.

kelnos3• 3 years ago

Or maybe we just accept that some people in the world do bad things, and unfortunately we can't actually catch all of them. Continually eroding more and more security and privacy in our personal effects in return for less crime is not a trade off that any rational person who wants to live in a free society should make. Certainly there can be disagreement as to where the line should be drawn, but even schemes like Apple's hash matching is going too far.

throwaway29012• 3 years ago

Or maybe we just accept that some people in the world do bad things, and unfortunately we can't actually catch all of them.

If we don't try, we are complicit in their crime by developing technology they use to fulfil their messed up purposes. Hope you sleep well at night!

Continually eroding more and more security and privacy in our personal effects in return for less crime

How about you fight for your privacy and security in other aspects of life that concern yourself first (security checks, cash controls, etc) and then go after victims who cannot stand up for themselves.

_Algernon_2• 3 years ago

The platonic ideal of end-2-end encryption is that it is encrypted from my brain until it is received in my correspondent's brain. This is obviously not currently feasible.

The closest approximation, is having a trusted client. This hashing scheme ruins the "trusted client" and I would no longer consider it e2e.

Not to mention that a database of hashes is trivially to expand with content that isn't CSAM. Next thing we know the European equivalent of the Tankman picture is included in the hash to more effectively pursue political opposition or activists.

This would destroy all ability to protest and singlehandedly eliminate democracy in Europe. I'm not exagerating. Climate activists in Germany are already put in "präventivhaft"[1] (preventive detention) before a civil disobedience / crime occurs. A scheme such as this would make it trivial to do at massive scales.

[1] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/staatsregierung-verteid...

viscousviolin• 3 years ago

Thirty days of preventive detention is outrageous. Way to go Bavaria.

throwaway29012• 3 years ago

Then go ahead and suggest any credible way to combat the modern epidemic of child abuse instead of being like the rest of the thread making excuses for it. Your vocal sheltered armchair maximalism on this topic is not a moral option if you agree to equivalent compromises in all other areas of your life. Either suggest an alternative measure in this case, or show an example and fight against those other compromises (that limit your freedom and privacy) first. After all, many of them only concern yourself and your family rather than countless innocent victims who cannot stand up for themselves.

If techies don't suggest any good alternative measure to prevent abuse then someone else will do it in a worse way and then welcome to panopticon. There's no black and white where tech touches human factor so learn to compromise.

matheusmoreira9• 3 years ago

Fighting against any measure altogether is immoral

Not at all. I want end-to-end encryption and I want complete control over my computer. I couldn't care less how hard it makes the life of police either.

The "measure" is they get the hell out there and do actual real police work instead of pushing a button and having your entire life revealed to them. There's a limit to how many cops they can spare to tail some suspect. There's no limit at all when computers are involved.

shrubble• 3 years ago

I am sure they would never exempt themselves from such monitoring, correct? Given the Dutroux scandal, which revealed some rather shady behavior on the part of multiple people in positions of power, seems likely there would be rules for the little people but not others.

ballenf• 3 years ago

Just after they open to public inspection all the deliberation, discussion and industry lobbying behind weakening encryption on the basis that people who have nothing to hide shouldn't care.

karaterobot• 3 years ago

I'm simply astonished to find that a body which condemns the use of microtargeted Facebook ads to influence elections would do this. I'm equally shocked to find out that they would commission a fake survey to provide pseudoscientific cover to their self-serving positions. It's almost enough to shatter my faith that people in government are working on my behalf, and make me think they're all just hypocrites. Next, I might start to question the validity of surveys on political topics, but fortunately I'm still pretty naive and credulous.

throwawayqqq113• 3 years ago

When you stop your train of thought at "polticians are evil" you havent found the root but only a symptom.

What corrupts people in any position and how would we keep our institutions as clean as possible?

(Hint: It might have something to do with democracy and "working on your behalf".)

Edit: Where does the notion, that an EU body is behind the campagne come from?

Y_Y• 3 years ago

I blame the electorate.

api• 3 years ago

What corrupts people in any position

Incentives rule the world. The question to ask is what the incentive structure of a politician's world looks like.

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 3 years ago

There need be no corruption, for bad outcomes to occur. True that it never helps, and perhaps even true that when there is corruption, there tend to be slightly more bad outcomes.

But the bad outcomes are just decisions, most of which are neither illegal nor plainly unethical, made so quickly and relentlessly that real people get chewed up by them.

grpt• 3 years ago

Edit: Where does the notion, that an EU body is behind the campagne come from?

It's literally what the linked article is about.

idonotknowwhy2• 3 years ago

Corruption also exists outside of democracies.

creer5• 3 years ago

Seems to me the problem is very much the LACK of "working on your behalf". I don't feel that many people go into public service "unselfishly". People go into public service by ambition (and then quickly enough there is no point in anything except to build the network); or to further their own adolescent ideals (and then fuck everything else in the service of that obsession); or for the benefits; or because it's the ideal stable job; etc. Who in there does it "to do the right thing for the overall good of the overall population"? Who actually does it "to defend the constitution" (I mean not just when it's convenient?).

jvanderbot2• 3 years ago

When you lump all legislation, government initiatives, reforms, taxes, etc together and say "this is a cohesive, person-like entity I can reason about" you will definitely find contradictions everywhere.

Just within a business or bar or family, dissenting opinions are everywhere. Unlike a business, every little opinion and workgroup and project are a matter of public record and are aimed at affecting public policy. So yeah, it sure seems like "They" are a bunch of hypocrites.

And if you want to go further and lump _all pollsters_ into the group of like-minded, coherent entities that never dissent from eachother ... well, why stop there? Why not the "other party" as well? Or reptile people?

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 3 years ago

When you lump all legislation, government initiatives, reforms, taxes, etc together and say "this is a cohesive, person-like entity I can reason about"

But it is actually a person-like entity. It is a weak hivemind composed of humans who have (for the most part) had their own individualistic tendencies suppressed or even eliminated.

It's the most human-like non-human you'll ever see.

It's not unfair to think of it as person-like. It's not unreasonable to think of it as person-like. It is, in many cases, dangerous to think of it in any other way.

But, there are people out there who find it inconvenient to their political ambitions if you think this way (or, really, there are politics-entities out there for whom it is inconvenient and who dangle their semi-individual chelicerae out to belittle and chastise you for it).

Or reptile people?

Reptile people would be a relief. They just want to eat babies and impersonate the queen or something.

zosima3• 3 years ago

Just within a business or bar or family, dissenting opinions are everywhere. Unlike a business, every little opinion and workgroup and project are a matter of public record and are aimed at affecting public policy. So yeah, it sure seems like "They" are a bunch of hypocrites.

This is simply not true. See e.g. here, how the commission does not publish dissenting internal comments in the official meeting minutes: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/controversy-between-european-com...

colpabar2• 3 years ago

Don't be so cynical. All these problems are 100% the fault of the political party you don't like. We definitely don't need to question the system, just blame the bad guys and keep paying your taxes!

ravenstine• 3 years ago

It's all political. No need to be astonished from now on.

amne• 3 years ago

I noticed you are missing a "/s" suffix.

pembrook• 3 years ago

If Europeans are going to voluntarily allow their government to continuously scan all of their private data 24/7, can the rest of the world stop wasting time caring about GDPR please?

Moving every cloud service to be EU-hosted is going to look really stupid once it means you’ve just centralized all worlds data under a 24/7 foreign surveillance & espionage dragnet.

If I had to guess, I’d say the amount of money spent globally on lawyers re: GDPR must exceed the gross national product of Greece. For it to all backfire in this way would be quite humorous.

Aerroon• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, it's not the first time the EU had tried something like this either.

According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

eigenket4• 3 years ago

You should read some of the discussion on this here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473

This is largely being pushed by people related to an organisation called "Thorn".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473#37962743

Thorn seems to be related to US tech companies. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Palantir, are all mentioned on the wayback machine version of their website as "tech taskforce" mebers. My interpretation would be that US tech is pushing this law because they know there is money to be made here (providing the scanning systems and collecting as much data as they can).

zosima3• 3 years ago

People are so enamored by the idea of EU, and cooperation across European borders, that they fail to see what kind of entity it really is, and what people control it.

If this monster is not controlled it will grow to become another USSR, completely stifling all innovation in Europe, 24/7 censoring what is appropriate for citizens to read and see, while continuously spying on everyone, everywhere.

It can't be allowed to continue.

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

European Parliament mostly works and has mostly curbed the EC's incompetence, ill-intent, overreach.

The issue is the European Comission and the Council of Ministers that appoints them.

The EC seems to progressively be filled by increasingly incompetent and unqualified comissioners. But more worrying for me is their increasing affinity with lobbying.

Many legal systems across the EU explicitly prohibit lobbying not sure why we even allow it in the EU.

adev_2• 3 years ago

Exactly.

The main problem with the EU is that it is an entity with a construction aborted half-way.

The EU parlement is a example of what the EU should be. The EU commission is not.

The EU commission was literally intended as a temporary fix for the executive power on the road of a broader European federation.

The federarion never happened. And is very unlikely to happen with the PPE (main European conservative party) and the extreme right dominating the political landscape.

WinstonSmith84• 3 years ago

hm well, that goes a bit out of topic here. As much as I truly hate to see what the commission is doing, it's naive to think that individual countries are just wishing something better for their people. In fact, this legislation may have been promoted by some EU countries. The chance of the EU is that it's big enough that 500m people care about it, and that's how such things come to light. If it were a random small EU country going full speed to 1984, the chance is much higher that such a legislation would be approved. And then the next country.. all slowly falling like domino

colpabar2• 3 years ago

It seems like it’d be better if one country could go down that path alone, just so the rest of us could point to it as a reminder of why we shouldn’t do the things that it did. The EU makes it so it has to happen to everyone at once.

creer5• 3 years ago

Yes, many not-really in sync countries are a great protection there. And still not effective enough probably.

In part there is a lot of group-think overall - which even separate countries have a hard time fighting, when they even notice it or have a will to fight it. For another problem, there are two countries with disproportionate population and economics weight - they cannot outright dictate with impunity but they are in a position to make everyone else negotiate and mostly agree with them.

miniBill• 3 years ago

I'm in love with the idea of the EU, that doesn't mean that I think any of this is remotely acceptable.

And I think that "it can't be allowed to continue" is a dumb idea

akira25012• 3 years ago

To me, the internet should have destroyed the idea of a large centralized federal bureaucracy. The two ideas are almost entirely incompatible. The citizens now have access to each other, their local government, and to world news in a way they never had before. I have a feeling that getting rid of all the large centralized power structures would allow the gift the internet to truly flourish for humanity.

kuchenbecker• 3 years ago

There's a tension in tech between client control and server control. Big Tech have largely been removing the knobs of client control within their apps while using the power of defaults to slow people switching.

matheusmoreira9• 3 years ago

Just cut out the "for Child Abuse" part. They want to scan people's private messages. The reason doesn't matter.

hsbauauvhabzb2• 3 years ago

From their perspective it becomes a lot more difficult for opposing views to argue about when your response can simply be ‘so you support pedophiles?’

throwaway0923232• 3 years ago

That's really smart.

matheusmoreira9• 3 years ago

Yeah. Which is why we should treat it as the smoke and mirrors it is. Just completely ignore their justification and avoid repeating those words on every news report.

These politicians couldn't give less of a fuck about children. Politics and children do not belong in the same body of text. Finding the words "child", "terror", "drug" and "money launder" in any political text is evidence of bad faith and a perfectly valid reason to completely dismiss whatever's being said. It's almost certain they're trying to manipulate people into giving up freedom for false security by appealing to the eternal bogeymen of society. Communists were that bogeyman once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

idonotknowwhy2• 3 years ago

Yep, in 2010,the Australian communications minister Steven Conroy literally said this to a journalist who question his child abuse internet filter. This is after a leaked draft of this black list came out with sites like wikilealks on it...

Said something like "I don't support opting in to pedophilia"

akira25012• 3 years ago

People who trade in images of abuse should be punished on some level; however, they are the smallest part of the problem, the people who actually abuse children for the purposes of taking pictures are the real problem and I highly doubt you're going to catch them by scanning text messages.

It's completely wasted effort and does nothing to stop pedophiles or to protect children.

gosub1002• 3 years ago

Disclaimer: I acknowledge that this is a whataboutism argument.

Why not use the phone to detect physical and verbal abuse? The microphone is always on for most users, we have algos that can detect the sound of an adult yelling, a child crying, and the percussive sound of a human hitting another human. If 2/3 of those sounds are detected, why not forward that to NCMEC for further review? It doesn't have to be "1 yell, 1 cry, break down the door", it could be a pattern detector that logs the times, the severity, and the mode. If it hears objects being thrown, people yelling, kids crying, why isn't that sufficient to call authorities? How come "think of the children" suddenly doesn't work anymore?

I'm being 50% facetious here because obviously that's a huge privacy issue. But the same logic for CSAM scanning still applies nonetheless. Why only address 1/3 of abuse and ignore verbal/emotional, and physical? Those kids need justice too.

rad_gruchalski2• 3 years ago

Why not use the phone to detect physical and verbal abuse?

And adultery! Require married couples to register their handsets in the national register and detect when people have sex! And if the phones are too far apart, send morality police with a whip. Ffs.

eep_social• 3 years ago

Actually it would be easier and more effective to register every handset and run a check any time two are close together but otherwise isolated. That way we get adultery but as an added bonus, also any extramarital sex, gay sex, kinky sex, or just generally any behavior between two people that we don’t approve of. /s

gosub1002• 3 years ago

So punching a child is just a lifestyle choice, like getting laid on the side?

awsthr0w4y• 3 years ago

The first horseman of the Infocalypse has arrived.

hsbauauvhabzb2• 3 years ago

I often wonder if we’re emerging as a society that must agree on free speech but must also agree on ethical compromises. Extreme left and right wing views are both problematic and there is some validity to LE being unable to track electronic crime due to encryption.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t trust any proposed laws in their current state, but as a society we trust judges to sentence people for crimes, and referees to call foul in sport - I just wish there was the formation of a legitimate ethics committee which would act in good faith on society, because inevitably rights will erode and without one we will be left with less.

Edit: I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I’m interested to hear contrasting thoughts, please vocialize disagreements

shawnz• 3 years ago

There is no objective morality, so any such ethics committee must have to make some trade-offs that are a matter of opinion. We can already mostly agree as a society that protecting civil liberties is more important than having zero crime: otherwise we wouldn't have freedom of speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and other things which make it easier to commit crimes.

geraldwhen• 3 years ago

Most of the world doesn’t have freedom of speech. You can absolutely be arrested and jailed for speech in Europe.

eigenket4• 3 years ago

This is not really a "fresh" scandal, we had a hacker news discussion about exactly this 10 days ago.

EU plan to scan private messages for child abuse meets fresh scandal

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