It has been pointed out that interest groups are behind the EU's mandatory ``Child Sexual Abuse Content Detection System''
In May 2022, the European Commission, the EU's policy enforcement agency, issued a warning to online service providers such as chat apps and SNS to scan users' private messages to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM). proposed regulations that would impose an obligation to
'Who Benefits?' Inside the EU's Fight over Scanning for Child Sex Content | Balkan Insight
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/
The regulation proposed by the European Commission in May 2022, also known as the 'Chat Control Law,' obligates companies to detect CSAM exchanged online. If this regulation goes into effect, online service providers will be required to scan all chat messages, emails, files, in-game chats, video calls, etc. to see if they contain CSAM.
This effectively disables end-to-end encryption and means that every message is monitored by the service provider. As a result, experts have criticized the idea of infringing on people's privacy.
Criticism of the EU's ``chat regulation law'' that risks weakening the encryption of online services in the name of preventing child sexual abuse - GIGAZINE
According to Balkan Insight, which conducted interviews with numerous parties involved and examined internal documents, Ylva Johansson, who is the European Commission's commissioner for home affairs and is an advocate of regulatory legislation, said that the European Commission would submit the bill. A few days ago, they sent a letter to an American nonprofit organization called Thorn . Thorn is an organization that works to prevent the spread of CSAM and child trafficking, and at the same time is also developing an ``AI tool for scanning CSAM online''.
In the letter, Johansson told Julie Cordua, Thorn's executive director, 'We have shared many moments along the way to this proposal, and now we are excited to successfully launch it.' We need everyone's help to make this happen,'' he said, asking for support for the regulatory bill.
It is not unnatural for Thorn to cooperate with proponents of the chat regulation law, but Balkan Insight focuses on the point that ``Thorn can profit by selling CSAM detection tools.'' Thorn is registered as a 'charitable organization' in the EU's lobbying organization database, but it also works with organizations around the world, including the US Department of Homeland Security, OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, video platform Vimeo, and photo sharing platform Flickr. We sell AI tools to companies.
If passed, anti-chat legislation would require a wide variety of online platforms to implement CSAM detection systems, but developing such tools from scratch is difficult. Therefore, for organizations and companies such as Thorn that are already developing AI tools for CSAM detection, passing the Chat Regulation Act has significant economic benefits.
Actor Ashton Kutcher , co-founder of Thorn, has long been the public face of Thorn, but in 2023 he defended Danny Masterson , who was accused of rape. It turned out that the letter had been submitted to the court. He subsequently resigned as Chairman of Thorn's Board of Directors in September 2023.
Balkan Insight points out that the European Commission has long refused to release a series of emails exchanged by Thorn with the Home Office, which Johansson heads. At that time, he cited Thorn's position that ``disclosing information contained in emails may harm an organization's commercial interests.'' Finally, after the intervention of
Balkan Insight, which investigated the published emails, found that the European Commission and Thorn have been working closely and continuously in the months since the development of the anti-chat law, and that there has been no significant effort attended by ministers and representatives of EU Member States. It is reported that Thorn was encouraged to be invited to the decision-making forum.
The European Ombudsman is further investigating the European Commission's refusal to provide access to a number of other internal documents related to Johansson's proposal.
According to Alda Gerkens, former director of Offlimits , Europe's oldest CSAM reporting hotline, Offlimits invited Johansson to its office in the Netherlands, but Johansson only visited companies in Silicon Valley and North America. In the end, he never visited the Offlimits office. Gerkens said: 'The anti-chat law is influenced by groups acting as tech companies while posing as NGOs. Groups like Thorn feel the anti-chat law is a step towards combating child sexual abuse. 'We are doing everything we can to bring forward the bill, not only because we are doing so, but also because there is a commercial benefit to doing so.'
Meredith Whittaker, chairman of the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization that develops the encrypted chat app Signal, said that the more the issue of CSAM is brought up, the greater the incentive for major technology companies to outsource scanning systems. He points out that AI companies developing ``AI'' are actively moving. Whittaker said, ``Regardless of legal status, child exploitation is promoted as an ``online'' problem when in fact it is a deep social and cultural problem, and the solution to it is a quick and profitable one.'' It is clear that the government is pursuing its own interests by proposing high-tech solutions for I think they don't understand something.'
Balkan Insight also found that Thorn donated 219,000 euros (approximately 34 million yen) in 2021 to WeProtect , a Dutch foundation that works to prevent online child sexual abuse. . WeProtect's members include various law enforcement and government officials, executives from large technology companies, and Johansson's confidante, Antonio Jiménez, who leads the European Commission's team tackling CSAM. It is said that there is.
Mr. Jimenez officially became a member of WeProtect's board of directors in July 2020, but it is known that before that, Mr. Jimenez participated in a board meeting as of December 2019. . Mr. Jimenez explained the chat regulation law to WeProtect's directors in July 2022, and the board of directors reportedly discussed media strategy. In addition, the European Commission has provided funding to WeProtect as part of its CSAM countermeasures, and the Directorate General for the Interior, led by Johansson, has provided approximately 1 million euros (approximately 160 million yen) to WeProtect from 2020 to 2023. , Balkan Insight points out.
Additionally, WeProtect's board of directors includes Douglas Griffiths, a former employee of the U.S. State Department and chairman of a philanthropic group called the Oak Foundation . The Oak Foundation actively supports NGOs tackling child abuse, providing significant funding to WeProtect and Thorn, as well as a network of civil society organizations and lobbying groups supporting Johansson's proposed legislation. doing.
One of the organizations launched with support from the Oak Foundation is the Brave Movement , which was launched in 2022 to work to prevent child sexual abuse. An internal Brave Movement document created in November 2022 clearly supports Johansson's anti-chat law, stating, ``The main role of the Brave Movement regarding the anti-chat law is that it We need to see it passed and implemented in its entirety.'' ``If this bill is adopted, it will set a positive precedent for other countries.''
It is also known that the Brave Movement has built a media strategy using ``survivors of sexual abuse'' to weaken the influence of critics who oppose the chat control law. According to internal documents, a strategy was developed to ``pair up'' influential members of the European Parliament with sexual abuse survivors from their countries of origin, and attack each member individually.
In addition, Mr. Johansson claims that ``the CSAM detection system will not be misused for other censorship and will not cause an invasion of privacy,'' but this point has also been questioned. “The European Commission's initial impact assessment had very little external scientific input,” said Matthew Green, a cryptography expert at Johns Hopkins University . It points out that it can be dangerous and compromise encryption.
Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge , argues that the debate over AI-based CSAM scanning overlooks the potential for use by law enforcement. “The law enforcement and intelligence communities have always undermined online privacy, using issues that frighten lawmakers like children and terrorism. We all know how this works. 'If the next terrorist attack comes, I don't think there's any member of Congress who could oppose expanding the scope of scans from child sexual abuse to serious violent and political crimes.' expressed concern that this would also extend to criminal offenses.
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