‘Who Benefits?’ Inside the EU’s Fight over Scanning for Child Sex Content
‘Who Benefits?’ Inside the EU’s Fight over Scanning for Child Sex Content
An investigation uncovers a web of influence in the powerful coalition aligned behind the European Commission’s proposal to scan for child sexual abuse material online, a proposal leading experts say puts rights at risk and will introduce new vulnerabilities by undermining encryption.
I don't understand how "client-side scanning" - i.e. an invasive piece of code pushed by OS makers to YOUR computer or mobile device to scan YOUR files without your consent - is even being discussed.
This is tantamount to an Apple or Google rep forcibly entering your house, sitting on the couch next to you in your living room and reporting to the mothership or the police what you watch on TV. People would take to the street if this was mandated by law. Yet they seem to be waiting for the Apple or Google rep to sit on their device and report what files you have in it with complete resignation.
How did we get here? This obscene proposal would have been a major scandal not 25 year ago. Actually it wouldn't even have been proposed at all. But today it's on the verge of becoming law! The mind boggles...
60Permanently Deleted
15If the system was transparent, open, and provided an easy way to get false positive sorted, I wouldn’t necessarily even have a problem with the concept.
How can you even say that?
This is what baffles me the most: how does anyone even entertain the idea of letting a third-party scan their own files on their own device uninvited? Even if the process is transparent and there's a 100% fool-proof way of taking care of false positives, the very idea of letting anyone scan anything on my computers in the first place is completely unacceptable!
People would have never deeemed anything like this even remotely acceptable 25 years ago. But in 2023, enough people have internalized the idea enough that this actually has a chance to become law without creating an outrage. I am utterly distressed by what society is willing to accept nowadays.
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Oh, something very similar has been proposed already some time ago, just under the guise of stopping terrorism. That excuse evidently doesn't work anymore.
7Google has been doing it on drive for years now. False positives have been several times reported to the police, despite a human reviewing it
7Yeah but that's different: you entrust files to Google drive. It's their digital real estate: I expect them to do whatever they want with what you put on it. If you don't want false-positives, don't send your files to Google.
But your cellphone or your computer at home is your digital real-estate. It's your home. I for one do not welcome Google in my home, and I absolutely refuse to let them see what's inside my home.
Because really, client-side scanning is nothing more than home invasion.
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It’s already being discussed to be put in law but people still aren’t rioting. Chat control 2.0 is just this.
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Johansson, however, has not blinked. “The privacy advocates sound very loud,” the commissioner said in a speech in November 2021. “But someone must also speak for the children.”
Fuck the children.
36Well, don’t fuck the children…
24Yep fucking children will only add more coal to the fire. Fuck the pedos though
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The arrogance of her statement is really frustrating. People who know more about this domain than you do are telling you it’s a bad idea, you shithead!
20You know what? I know what you mean, but on the internet of 2023, I would never post that last line on a forum for fear of it being archived by Google and used against me in some form or other years later. This is the sort of self-censorship one has to do these days.
2I mean, if you're worried about Google doing something like that, they could just as easily manufacture statements by you with enough supporting evidence to screw you no matter what you say.
The owner of the lemmy instance you are on, can sign in as you and leave comments all over the place and hide them from your view and manufacture the logs to look like it was posted from your IP address.
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Keep in mind that one of the leading organizations pushing laws like this is Thorn. You know, the one Ashton Kutcher ran. You know, the guy who sent a letter to a judge asking for leniency for a convicted serial rapist. All these laws are smokescreens to take away people's right to privacy and dissent.
22Once a system like this is up and running, nothing is stopping a government from abusing it.
Oh actually, we think it'd be a good idea to broaden its capabilities to do stuff we've never explicitely mentioned before. You don't mind, do you?
19I'm all for the fight against child abuse but these actions are under the guise of fighting child abuse. Now if government implemented awareness, destigmatization of abuser so they can seek help. And dealt with core issues rather then chasing the shit storm thats already been and gone, well wed have a far better society. Its really about control though, once you've got money, a high societie social group what else is there
19It’s never about creating a better society, just oppression and exploitation. The more criminals you easily fabricate, the more indentured servants you easily get.
6exactly. its a joke
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At this point you should consider that all your devices are compromised or compromisable.
the amount of data gathered by your device's OS , is akin to a surveillance tool. Microsoft, Google and Apple have shown an ever growing appetite to siphoning user data back to their servers. and no consumer really has an extensive view of what is gathered. if you want sovereignty over your device a linux OS you compile yourself from source is the only guarantee you can rely on .
I bought an affordable xiaomi phone. and I was floored by how much data the device is trying to collect and how restrictive this vendor version of android has become. they have replaced stock android apps with their own apps that all try to phone home. you can't even change your ringtone straight from the config panel. it redirects you to xiaomi's propriatary app just to replace the ringtone with one that is already store on the phone. their proprietary shit apps keep filing my firewall's blocklist log.
18I had a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 and noticed the traffic to China. I blocked network access for all Xiaomi apps and the phone started overheating because it tried over and over again pinging back to China. Never again Xiaomi.
6I think you went on to check literally for the worst possible offender. That's how they subsidize their cheap phones. They have now monitors (not TVs!) with smart features, only so they can continue to phone home. I'd advise to unlock and install something like lineageos on it.
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They may benefit from it, but it's pretty hard to believe that a bunch of sleazy "AI can do everything" snake oil salesmen, along with the politicians and lobbyists they've bought, got to be this influential and well-funded on their own. It's not as if their arguments are all that convincing on their merits.
6I wish a big company would go against the grain on the child protection issue.
Everyone wants to protect children, but child predators aren't going to be storing their abuse materials on the cloud.
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