EU

Ingen – inte ens EU-kommissionen själv – är beredd att försvara kommissionär Ylva Johanssons förslag om ny massövervakning, Chat Control 2. Däremot stod kritikerna på kö när EU:s dataskyddsmyndighet ordnade ett seminarium om frågan.

I måndags höll EU:s dataskyddsmyndighet EDPS ett seminarium i Europaparlamentet om Chat Control 2: EDPS Seminar on the CSAM Proposal: ”The Point of No Return?” »

Under drygt två timmar levererade ett 20-tal experter svidande kritik mot EU-kommissionens förslag. En utmärkt – och grundlig – sammanfattning finns hos TechCrunch: Europe’s CSAM-scanning plan is a tipping point for democratic rights, experts warn »

Seminariet kan även ses här. »

Några intressanta nedslag nedan. Vi börjar med the European Data Protection Supervisor, Wojciech Wiewiórowski. Från TechCrunch:

“It is often being used in the debate that this proposal is only about protecting children. I would like this to be the case — but it’s not,” he went on, arguing that the Commission’s proposal questions the “foundations” of what privacy means in a democratic society; and pointing out that privacy, once undermined, leads to “the radical shift from which there might be no return”, as he put it.

Without amendments, the proposal would “fundamentally change the Internet and the digital communication as we know it”, Wiewiórowski also warned at the event’s close — invoking his personal childhood experience of living under surveillance and restrictions on freedom of expression imposed by the Communist regime in Poland. And, most certainly, it’s an awkward comparison for the EU’s executive to be asked to contemplate coming from the mouth of one of its own expert advisors.

Frederik Borgesius, professor på iHub, Radboud University, i Nederländerna menade att Chat Control 2 uppenbart går bortom vad som kan anses vara nödvändigt och proportionerligt i relation till de mänskliga rättigheterna.

I detta tog han avstamp i EU-domstolens ogiltigförklarande av EU:s datalagringsdirektiv, som ju ”bara” handlade om metadata, inte innehåll (som Chat Control 2).

“Actually, the court might not even get to a proportionality test because the data retention cases were about metadata. And this is about analysing the content of communications,” he went on. “The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has an element that says if the essence of a fundamental right is violated then the measure is illegal by definition — there’s not even a need for a proportionality test.”

Borgesius also pointed out there’s case law on this essence point too. “When is the essence violated? Well, the court has said — in a different case — if authorities can access the contents of communications on such a large scale then the discussion is over,” he explained. “No room for proportionality test — the essence of the right to privacy would be violated, and therefore such a measure would be illegal.”

Chat Control 2 kommer alltså att kunna upphävas av EU-domstolen på rent principiella grunder. Men sådant tar tid och förslaget kan ställa till med mycket skada fram till dess.

Ytterligare några citat ur texten:

One issue several speakers raised is that a large proportion of the sexualized content involving minors that’s being shared online is actually being done so by (and between) consenting minors (i.e. sexting). The Commission proposal could therefore lead to children being investigated and even criminalizing for exploring their own sexual identities, they suggested — since understanding what is and isn’t CSAM is not something that can necessarily be done by simply reviewing the imagery itself.

Detta speciellt som CC2 vill se AI-stödd sökning efter tidigare okänt olagligt material.

Certainly in the case of new CSAM (i.e. suspected CSAM content that has not been previously seen, investigated and confirmed as illegal child sexual abuse material), context is essential to any assessment of what is being depicted. This is not something an AI scanning tool, or even a trained human looped in to review flagged imagery, can inherently know just by looking at a piece of content, the seminar heard.

Om Client Side Scanning på användarnas telefoner och datorer:

“As computer science researchers we’ve just begun to look at this technology,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer professor at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “I want to stress how completely new the idea of client side scanning is — the very first computer science research papers on the topic appeared in 2021 and we’re not even two years later, and we’re already discussing laws that mandate it.”

“The problem of building systems where [content scanning] algorithms are confidential and can’t be exploited is something we’re just beginning to research. And so far, many of our technical results are negative — negative in the sense that we keep finding ways to break these systems,” he also told the seminar. “Break them means that we will ultimately violate the confidentiality of many users. We will cause false positives. We will cause bad data to be injected into the system.

Detta är bara några exempel på kritik mot förslaget om Chat Control 2. Vi kan starkt rekommendera läsning av hela artikeln.

EU-kommissionär Ylva Johansson var inbjuden till seminariet för att försvara sitt förslag. Varken hon eller någon annan från kommissionen ville dock medverka.

(Däremot frågas kommissionär Johansson ut av Europaparlamentets utskott för mänskliga rättigheter – LIBE – idag onsdag 25/10 kl 14:30. Då gäller det den kontroversiella lobbykampanjen för Chat Control 2. Livestreamas här.)

• TechCrunch: Europe’s CSAM-scanning plan is a tipping point for democratic rights, experts warn »

Relevant debattartikel:
• Europaportalen: Riksdagen måste säga nej till Chat Control 2.0 »

Läs mer:
• Chatcontrol.se »
• Chatcontrol.eu »
• Allt du behöver veta om #ChatControl »
• StopScanningMe.eu »

• Använd denna mail-robot för att protestera mot förslaget om Chatcontrol »

Följ oss även på Twitter: @femtejuli