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EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

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Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#131

Post by _fat_santa »

belter wrote: post #62
SamuelAdams wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a movie called Minority Report that had a similar premise. Basically they would detect murders before they happened and arrest people moments before the murder took place. At the time of the arrest the potential killer had motive and intent, so that’s how they justified it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)?wprov=s...

The movie was a warning: "UK police are using AI to predict who could become violent criminals" https://thenextweb.com/news/uk-police-are-using-ai-to-predic...

The problem with cops using AI is they seem to put far too much weight on what it discovers. I remember reading a story about how Clearview AI nabbed some random person and claimed that they were some other person. The story wen't on that the cops picked this guy up and bent over backwards to try to make sense of what their AI was telling them, because they thought the AI was infallible. Guy was telling the cops that he had nothing to do with what they were accusing him of and IIRC the cops kept coming back with "but why would the AI single you out"

And that's the root of the problem. We in tech know AI can do all these great things but that it also has a high error rate and to take results with a grain of salt. Folks outside of tech think that it's infallible and perfect 100% of the time.

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#132

Post by _Algernon_ »

op00to wrote: post #75
krono wrote: post #7

Yeah not like this. I will turn myself into a black hole as much as possible. If they somehow ever come to suspect me of these things I will gladly do anything I can to support their investigations. They can come by with a warrant, look through my message history specifically and only for evidence related to their investigation, it will happen in my presence, and no copies of my data will be made and/or fed into the…

Unfortunately, here's what will really happen: 5:30am, loud knock at the door. You open the door a crack to see who it is. Cops bust in. You're immediately handcuffed and sat outside. Cops take anything with a screen, usb plug, etc. All your media. All your computers. All your external hard drives. Every one of these devices will be imaged, and archived prior to being searched. The data will be kept for years, to pro…

As if full disk encryption doesn't exist.

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#133

Post by stef25 »

dorfsmay wrote: post #73
stef25 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably not the first person to ask the question of "but what about parents taking pictures of their naked kids in a pool", I'm sure they plan on having some way of dealing with it if anything to lighten their workload. That doesn't mean it will be perfect but no matter how jaded we all are, nobody wants to start falsely accusing innocent people.

And yet you regularly hear of child porn cases in the US because a 17 year old girl sent pictures of her nude body to her 18 year old boyfriend.

Yes, in the US.

Meanwhile France last year just dropped the age of consent to 15 and if you check Wikipedia you'll most EU countries have it set around the same age.

It's doubtful you could even find a single case someone being prosecuted because their actual underage boy / girlfriend sent them an explicit picture.

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#134

Post by londons_explore »

Freak_NL wrote: post #47

It's scary, because CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is very, very broad, and quite vague in its definition¹. My three year old son stayed with my parents for a week, and he was being taught to swim in their swimming pool. Of course, I get sent pictures and clips of his progress by a proud grandma, and of course, him being a toddler, he felt swimming trunks to be completely optional (and of course, they are at his…

> I get sent pictures and clips of his progress

Those pictures will be seen by you and grandma, but also maybe by employees of whoever you use to backup the pictures, whatever security services have a need to view the images, whichever police forensics department may need to look through your or grandmas phone if it were to be confiscated, etc.

Those employees need a good work environment, and can't be expected to look at your naked three year old.

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#135

Post by matt123456789 »

marsRoverDev wrote: post #117
Freak_NL wrote: post #47

It's scary, because CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is very, very broad, and quite vague in its definition¹. My three year old son stayed with my parents for a week, and he was being taught to swim in their swimming pool. Of course, I get sent pictures and clips of his progress by a proud grandma, and of course, him being a toddler, he felt swimming trunks to be completely optional (and of course, they are at his…

My understanding of this technology was it was usually a hash or fingerprint of some form of the material, to be compared against a database of hashes of known-bad material. I doubt EU countries have the infrastructure or budget to run models across everything, no?

That’s the implementation used by Apple for client-side scanning of iCloud uploads. NeuralHash or something. The EU may (and likely will) build an unrelated system, although it may share ideas with prior work.

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#136

Post by vanderZwan »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #90
Freak_NL wrote: post #47

It's scary, because CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is very, very broad, and quite vague in its definition¹. My three year old son stayed with my parents for a week, and he was being taught to swim in their swimming pool. Of course, I get sent pictures and clips of his progress by a proud grandma, and of course, him being a toddler, he felt swimming trunks to be completely optional (and of course, they are at his…

It's funny because in this regard, The Netherlands is actually trying to do better and change the laws to allow mutually consenting teens to do this stuff (still tentative) and punish blackmail, prostitution (edit: of minors), minor-adult sexual interaction etc. Our general mentality also seems to be a lot more lax and supportive of kids being victims of their own mistakes rather than going "yeah, that's illegal, let…

It probably helps that we were complaining about and even making fun of[0] our government for using child pornography as an excuse for pushing through draconian populist laws a decade ago already. We may just happen to have a little head-start here basically.

Edit: for the non-Dutch, the link goes to an article by the Dutch equivalent of The Onion and the headline says "Opstelten [our minister of Security and Justice at the time] says new regulations are needed or else child pornography".

[0] https://speld.nl/2012/10/24/opstelten-%E2%80%98nieuwe-maatre...

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#137

Post by c0balt »

chinathrow wrote: post #79
zosima wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, as this is not about child sex abuse anyway. The legislators know, from experience, that it's hard to argue against measures to protect children from predators, and so they are free to launch controversial and unacceptable measures. Once in place, it will be extended to other purposes. The same as always.

> The same as always. Do you have a guess about who is behind that lasting global push against private communications?

Not gp, but I would recommend reading about the crypto wars[0] and related conflicts. While the arguments are slightly different the overall idea of needing every message to be scannable stayed the same.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#138

Post by can16358p »

I don't think the actual purpose here is to protect children.

The actual purpose here to invade people's privacy, (ab)using a sensitive topic like children sexual abuse as a scapegoat as many people don't want to oppose to some protection on a sensitive topic and be marked as a potential criminal (or criminal ideology supporter).

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#139

Post by stef25 »

belter wrote: post #78
axiosgunnar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure they plan on having some way of dealing with it Hilariously naive approach to government overreach.

Indeed hilariously naive. "Naked Baby Photos Lead to Parents' Arrest" https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/naked-baby-p...

> The case of a Utah couple charged with a crime for photos they took of a father kissing his naked baby

These cases are absurd but we're talking about the EU here, not the US.

Re: EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

#140

Post by thwoeroi234 »

schroeding wrote: post #114

The worst thing is that, while the EU proposes dubious stuff like this, the police doesn't actually try to remove such content from the internet or are at least really ineffective at doing so. There was a documentary[1] from the german public tv station NDR in which reporters / journalists managed to delete the majority of content from one such CSAM forum, by sending deletion requests to the hosters. The police just.…

They're probably busy with their local pedophile-rings in Brussels.
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