Tech companies should actively search for depictions of child abuse. To do this, they would have to undermine the encrypted communications of all citizens.
Time and again, politicians hope to get a grip on child abuse by technical means. Remember the plan of the then (German) Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen, to make it more difficult to access images of abuse by means of an easy-to-circumnavigate view protection from websites. It failed in 2010 due to massive resistance from civil society.
Unfortunately in most cases this is just a smokescreen to get into peoples devices.
Traditional policing can catch many of these perpetrators. But it seems the will isn’t there, ( see UK, Rotherham and Rochdale scandal - the systematic rape of young girls, authorities knew and turned a blind eye for years), European courts passing weak sentences on child abusers, and then letting them out half way, and now people actively viewing and storing these images walking free from court.
Any decent person couldn’t argue about helping catch child abusers, that’s why they use that excuse to invade your privacy.
What’s next, the Chinese government wanting to see which Chinese person has a picture of Winnie the Poo on their device?
The authorities already have a way into my device - if they have probable cause they can go to a Judge, if he/she is happy with their suspicions he/she can issue a warrant. The police can then seize and examine my phone.
Remember we are innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent!!!
Say innocent unless proven guilty. Using the word until implies that it’s only a matter of time. Widespread use of it in this context conditions people to assume anyone accused must actually be guilty. Words matter!
The plans of the EU foresee that the chat control has to be done by the private sector. Facebook, Google and Microsoft and all other IT companies will be legally obligated to subject their customers’ communications and devices to total surveillance in order to search for criminal content.
According to these plans, Mark Zuckerberg, for example, will become chief of police on the Internet… That’s roughly how you have to imagine it.
This privatization of police work is then intended to circumvent the rule of law. The police are not allowed to do this. A police authority must present a justified suspicion for the monitoring of communication for each individual case in order to receive a judicial authorization to access it. A chat control by the police where everything is monitored without initial suspicion would therefore not be possible because it is clearly unconstitutional.
That’s why they are now trying to privatize this to the corporations in order to circumvent the rule of law.
Have you watched Minority Report (2002) ?
“In a future where a special police unit is able to arrest murderers before they commit their crimes, an officer from that unit is himself accused of a future murder.”
