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EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private communications

tutanota.com

41–50 of 431 posts

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

#41
The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot pole is awkward at best. It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly so. Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution for the abuse caused by those who are open to abusing others seems a little too internet-hippie to be taken seriously in 2022, and that's a little concerning when it's the echo chambers of those best qualified and responsible for coming up with workable solutions.

Edit: What a cacophony of indignation and polemic black/white responses. Absolutely shocking.

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

#42
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? In dense cities: yes.

I would rather ban (too) dense cities. Nobody needs to live at a density of 10k+ people per square kilometre .

Live in the pod. Eat the bugs.

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

#43

I don't understand how does "grooming detection algorithm" looks.

It'll be defined in practice as wrongthink WRT political, economic, or religious belief.

It'll be sold to "save the children" but it'll likely never be used for that.

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

#44
post #9

CSAM is terrible but how common is it to justify invading all of our privacy. Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? We know alcohol is damaging, maybe we should ruin that fun for everyone too.

>Cars can kill people. Should we ban those?

I'm not sure if you meant it this way (I like to think you did) or not but the answers you will get to this question when asked on this website are going to providing a great example of how things like "scan everyone's phone" come to pass.

People with some extremist take on some issue that mostly nobody cares too much about, they get sympathetic politicians who become convinced it's worth the blowback. Repeat for hundreds of issues and you get 1984.

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

#45
post #8
post #3

this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps getting rejected

The problem is they only need to win once. What we really need is an immutable section in the EU constitution that anyone who tries to take away basic privacy rights like this is immediately tried for crimes against humanity and sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

No post body was provided.

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

#46
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> full control in the name of COVID Apart from closing bars and restaurants etc what sort of full control did the EU impose?

nothing, it was in countries jurisdiction, actually people were calling for more central response from EU, but they didn't have any means/rights. Only thing EU did afaik, was EU covid certificates, which I'm eternally grateful for.

Grateful why? They served to restrict our rights.

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

#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 age in a private pool).

That's not CSAM right? But who knows how the AI will mark those happy pics? Some quirk in its programming and training leading to them being pushed way up whatever ranking is used? It's a nude child after all, and that is most likely one of the few things such an algorithm can detect quite reliably.

The automated filter won't care about the context though, and if any of the recent failures of algorithms ruining peoples lives are anything to go by (the Dutch Toeslagenaffaire comes to mind), being flagged by the CSAM filter is a high risk event — even if you can clear your name later by human intervention — because now you are on a list.

1: People tend to conjure up horrific images of underage children getting raped by adults when they hear 'CSAM' or 'child pornography', but when you read up on the legal definitions used it becomes very vague, quite fast. A seventeen year old boy sending a dick pic to his 18 year old lover is producing child pornography and can in many jurisdictions be sentenced as such, and nudism of any minor can be seen as CSAM if the pose they strike can be construed as 'erotic' — yet there is no clear definition of what this means, falling squarely into “I'll know it when I see it” territory.

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

#48
seems like maybe a better approach might be to require software developers to give parents/guardians features that allow a comprehensive view into the online activities of their children.

although unclear, that creates more visibility than has ever existed and could cause problems for kids who have different views from their parents.

we're in uncharted territory, really.

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

#49

The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot pole is awkward at best. It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly so. Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution for the abuse caused by those who are open to abusing others seems a little too internet-hippie to be taken seriously in 2022, and that's a little concerning when it's the echo chambers of those best qualified and responsible…

History has taught us a lesson. The USSR was hell on Earth, as was Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

Privacy of communication is such an essential part of modern culture that any kind of power trying to prevent it is suspect.

Communications can only be suspect under a judicial order: otherwise the government is omnipotent because it can prevent anything.

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

#50

The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot pole is awkward at best. It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly so. Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution for the abuse caused by those who are open to abusing others seems a little too internet-hippie to be taken seriously in 2022, and that's a little concerning when it's the echo chambers of those best qualified and responsible…

Because the situation is far more complex than this, and it's typical of governmental institutes to throw a blanket solution at it to increase resistance when it isn't at all obvious whether they will abuse their knowledge and power later in time.

You can teach these kids to take precautions, but you can't prevent them making mistakes if they still want to. Now you're weighting privacy and autonomy against lifelines to keep the ones who don't heed warnings from going off the deep end.

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