EU Parliament Fails To Renew Loophole Allowing Tech Firms To Report Abuse (theguardian.com) 13
Bruce66423 shares a report from the Guardian: The European parliament has blocked the extension of a law that permits big tech firms to scan for child sexual exploitation on their platforms, creating a legal gap that child safety experts say will lead to crimes going undetected. The law, which was a carve-out of the EU Privacy Act, was put in place in 2021 as a temporary measure allowing companies to use automated detection technologies to scan messages for harms, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM), grooming and sextortion. However, it expired on April 3, and the EU parliament decided not to vote to extend it, amid privacy concerns from some lawmakers.
The regulatory gap has created uncertainty for big tech companies, because while scanning for harms on their platforms is now illegal, they still remain liable to remove any illegal content hosted on their platforms under a different law, the Digital Services Act. Google, Meta, Snap and Microsoft said they would continue to voluntarily scan their platforms for CSAM, in a joint statement posted on a Google blog. Bruce66423 adds: "Child abuse as the excuse for avoiding privacy protections. Who would have thought it?"
The regulatory gap has created uncertainty for big tech companies, because while scanning for harms on their platforms is now illegal, they still remain liable to remove any illegal content hosted on their platforms under a different law, the Digital Services Act. Google, Meta, Snap and Microsoft said they would continue to voluntarily scan their platforms for CSAM, in a joint statement posted on a Google blog. Bruce66423 adds: "Child abuse as the excuse for avoiding privacy protections. Who would have thought it?"
The good then, the bad and the ugly (Score:3)
On the other, this allows a more oppressive law to be rushed through parliament. I'm certain that more than one "think of the children" activist is preparing to shout, that 'saving' victims requires everyone abandon their rights.
Re: (Score:2)
There are several ways companies can deal with these problems. 1) prevent pedos from signing up. 2) prevent children from signing up. 3) stop doing business in the
Re: The good then, the bad and the ugly (Score:2)
It is a lot simpler: the "big companies" simply lobbied for other, more pressing issues. Like keeping their walled gardens, or closing access to independent devs, etc.
And this one, whether working or not, just fell through.
Was it working and necessary in the first place? We don't know, as this key piece of info is sadly missing from tfs.
What a shitty summary of the situation (Score:5, Informative)
The measure ran out because those lawmakers, who wanted scanning, wanted to make it mandatory and were not willing to accept a proposed compromise.
What the article forgets to mention is that almost every tech expert was against it. There were also several big petitions that tried to change the lawmaker's minds.
Scanning of online communication invades the user's privacy and implementing mandatory scanning as proposed would have enabled the government to abuse it. What these big tech companies now mourn is that they no longer have an excuse to violate their user's privacy to make money - at least not when sending messages.
Re: What a shitty summary of the situation (Score:3)
mod parent up, as expected the "omg EU Parliament screwed teh children" angle is at the least dubious.
EU Has It Too? (Score:2)
Not a loophole (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The headline is propaganda anyway. It wasn't a loophole, and it had little or nothing to do with reporting abuse - it was about scanning private information using the excuse that they were searching for abuse.
Track record (Score:3)
How much abusive material did "big tech" firms find over the last few years while scanning private communications?
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm. Yeah doesn't look like anyone is going to paint a clear picture of what was intercepted (and/or how much).
Thats downright American (Score:2)
Strange times