DR, Denmark’s equivalent of the BBC, reports that:
The Danish presidency of the EU is currently working to gain support for the CSA regulation, which will open a backdoor to all Europeans’ phones in an attempt to trap and track down criminals who share sexual abuse material with children.
If the CSA regulation is voted through, police and judicial authorities will be able to access encrypted communication services such as WhatsApp and Signal – and thus the private communications of many millions of Europeans.
A leaked document from the European Council states that this will be done through client-side scanning . The technology works by scanning images, video and text on the user’s device before sending and encrypting them, including with the help of AI.
[…]
The CSA regulation was taken off the agenda of the EU Council of Ministers in June 2024 due to the risk of mass surveillance of EU citizens and a concern that the law could represent a setback for freedoms.
But two months later, the Minister of Justice [Peter Hummelgaard] stated to TV 2 that “we need to break with the completely erroneous perception that it is every man’s right to freedom to communicate on encrypted messaging services, which are used to facilitate many different serious forms of crime”.
Let me fix that for you…
“we need to break with the completely erroneous perception that it is every man’s right to freedom to communicate in their living room, or on the street corner or at the pub, places which are used to facilitate many different serious forms of crime”.
Time to buy stock in microphone companies.
Can we add an addendum to the legislation where the government pinkie swears not to misuse the information?
Like criticising the Government perhaps? Or voting for the wrong country on Eurovision?
“the children” is a standard excuse for government action to destroy basic liberties – even in countries like Britain where it is horribly clear that the government does not give a damn about children (winking at their rape and other abuse – if done by groups the establishment supports).
Discovered Joys – yes this is sort of thing they want to crush, for example the British establishment were filled with rage that so many British people voted for Israel in the Eurovision song contest.
Fraser Orr – the government is there before you, soon the owners of pubs will have a legal duty to crush dissent, as such dissent might upset members of staff or other people. In Scotland the regime is indeed very interested (in a nasty way) in what you say in your own home.
It is very difficult to do a parody of the attacks on liberty in Britain – because when someone tries to write a parody, it turns out that the government is already in the process of doing the insane thing – for real.
Know what else is used to facilitate almost every other type of unspeakable crime?
Breathing.
We MUST ban unsupervised breathing.
For the children.
(ETA: Apparently, it is acceptable to rape kids in the UK, but taking pics of them is beyond the Pale.)
bobby b, we only just got the EPA to stop regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Learn Morse code. That way, you can take someones hand and tap out your unlawful communications silently and, if there are cameras around, under the cover of a newspaper or cloth.
Not so far fetched. In some countries where haggling is the norm, deciding on a price was done by the buyer and seller doing exactly that in a code so bystanders couldn’t learn of the price the item was sold. Long, wizard type sleeves help enormously.
You can guarantee that this measure will not cover ministers or their families though. They are much too important to be spied on.
I’d no idea that the Confederate States of America were wielding such power at this late date.
This thread made me think of this:
https://youtu.be/PDBiLT3LASk?si=Ebww5dsRwrGPcUX4
It seems to me to be a similar way of thinking but sort of in the opposite direction. Destroying the freedom of everyone else in order to supposedly get at the bad guys. Of course the point of the speech does apply to all those who were happy to trample over the free speech of those they don’t agree with now weeping their crocodile tears over being doxed for gloating over Kirk’s assassination.
Pencils and paper can be used to communicate without government control. BAN PAPER!!!!!!!!!!
Should such draconian measures come to pass then first of all ordinary law abiding people will be put to extra effort to conform and put at extra risk of being hacked by law breakers.
Secondly ‘Criminals’ will rapidly learn how to encrypt their messages off-line for their colleagues to read on online noticeboards and decrypt off-line.
Excellent comments.
Yes indeed – this government interventionism is about power-and-control (power-lust), “the children” are just being trotted out as an excuse for what is really about crushing political and cultural dissent.
It is a very old trick – for example Sir Robert Walpole, three centuries ago, got the fools in Parliament to censor the theatre (agree to the government, in the person of the “Lord Chamberlain”, censoring plays – a system that lasted till the 1960s) by showing Parliament a dreadful play that supported, rape, murder, and so on.
Prime Minister Walpole secretly had this play written himself – he could not have cared less about “immoral plays”, he wanted to crush political dissent.
Paul,
Excellent points, well made, except… The government via control of fuel prices, raising employer NI etc. are already killing off pubs. No pubs, no need to surveil them!
JGH –
Pencils and paper can be used to communicate without government control. BAN PAPER!!!!!!!!!!
No need.
Paper and pencils are useless if people are illiterate. The schools have got that well in hand.
JG
Suffragium per litteras delendum est.
Fraser Orr: Bear in mind that under current Scots Law, certain communications may indeed be ruled illegal in one’s own living room.
Oh, really? And how do they propose to enforce that on POP email, then? Not saying they can’t, but if they want pitchforks and flaming torches, they’re going the right way about it.
A leaked document from the European Council states that this will be done through client-side scanning.
So, they propose breaking into my house, breaking into my computer equipment, and spending thousands of hours writing the software to perform this on my equipment?
including with the help of AI.
So, they’re going to beef up my internet connection to get that AI assistance? Or beef up my computer equipment so it can do it itself?
How do these morons manage to breathe?
On the contrary, we need to break with the completely erroneous perception on the part of a regrettable number of jumped up authoritarian bureaucrats that because encrypted messages can, just like every other form of communication, be used for bad as well as good, the state should be entitled to see them.
No such thing as a private conversation eh?
A leaked document from the European Council states that this will be done through client-side scanning
Thought I’d give my thoughts on this from a technical perspective. I think “client side” is a misleading description, what I think they really mean is putting spyware on everybody’s phone (and maybe computer.) Putting it on phones is probably possible by forcing the carriers to demand it they already put mases of crapware on your phone already. Android and iOS make this sort of snooping application VERY difficult because security modes can block visibility to some screens outside of the actual app itself, but they can definitely do an 80/20 thing there. What they are actually going to do with the information is less clear. Feed it back to a data center? Try to do analysis on the phone itself? I think the only thing they can reasonably do is target specific individuals. Most phones don’t have the juice to do on phone AI analysis, so the option of feeding a real time stream back to a data center sounds like a lot of data — who is going to pay for the transport?
Ironically on phone searches for CSAM is considerably more difficult than just scanning for words like “Starmer is a stormtrooper”.
For desktop PCs and laptops, getting spyware on there is much more difficult. It would take the cooperation of anti virus software organizations to do it without the consent of the user, and certainly something like a Linux system they simply could not do it. Note there is software similar to this that is used by corporate spying apps, but it is only possible because the corporation owns the computer and can force the software on as part of the login process. This is not true of your home laptop. Now of course they can push almost anything onto your computer (including CSAM if they want to get you) without your consent, especially if you are as careless as most people. But I think if it were not part of espionage operations but rather an official government program, doing it by fraud would be quite difficult.
There are some things they could do, such as insisting that all PCs sold in Europe are fitted with a special chip that does the scanning for them, but that would really cause an uproar.
So TBH doing this “client side” sounds like Big Brother’s wet dream rather than anything technically feasible, for sure it would have a dramatic impact on the usability of your phone and would probably consume a lot of data bandwidth, computer power and battery power on the phone. It just seems unlikely that they can do this en masse, only perhaps put it on everyone’s phone and just turn it on for people who they deem “bad guys”.
The whole thing is ugly as sin.
People often converse in low voices, even whispers, when they don’t want to be overheard.
Why?
What have they got to hide?
Cue the Interpersonal Conversations (Minimum Permitted Decibel Level) Act…
Fraser, I just Googled “CSAM”.
Thanks. I’m now on a list 😒
“There are some things they could do, such as insisting that all PCs sold in Europe are fitted with a special chip that does the scanning for them, but that would really cause an uproar.”
Would it though? It is for the CHIIILLDREEEN! People should have rioted in the streets over OSA and given Starmer a new posting in Wallachia. They didn’t.