A European Commission proposal could force tech companies to scan
private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and evidence
of grooming, even when those messages are supposed to be protected by
end-to-end encryption.

Online services that receive "detection orders" under the pending
European Union legislation would have "obligations concerning the
detection, reporting, removal and blocking of known and new child
sexual abuse material, as well as solicitation of children, regardless
of the technology used in the online exchanges," the proposal
says. The plan calls end-to-end encryption an important security tool
but essentially orders companies to break that end-to-end encryption
by whatever technological means necessary.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/war-upon-end-to-end-encryption-eu-wants-big-tech-to-scan-private-messages/

***** Moderator's Note *****

This kind of fluff pops up whenever some EU country is having an
election: it's free ink for the incumbents, and free ad revenue for
the "news" outlets that push it upon an untrained and ignorant public.

Whatever technical means the EU might /think/ are necessary, they
would be, even if implemented, bypassed by the porn freaks with little
trouble. I know this because I had a job doing remote-access virus
removal back in the early 2000's, and I found out that most of my
customers were trying to recover porm that had been deleted or
encrypted by others whom were taking advantage of the porn freaks'
passion (pun intended) for anonymity.

I was astonished at the number and variety of tips, techniques, and
software packages available to those whom chose to trade questionable
images or text: not as astonished as I was at some of the images, but
I solved that problem by finding another job.

Long story short, neither the EU nor any ISP can block traffic in
pornography, no matter how hard they pretend to try.

Bill Horne
Moderator

On 5/12/2022 0:38, Monty Solomon wrote:
> A European Commission proposal could force tech companies to scan
> private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and evidence
> of grooming, even when those messages are supposed to be protected by
> end-to-end encryption.
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Whatever technical means the EU might /think/ are necessary, they
> would be, even if implemented, bypassed by the porn freaks with little
> trouble.
>
> Long story short, neither the EU nor any ISP can block traffic in
> pornography, no matter how hard they pretend to try.

All they managed to do by attempting to block pornography via Usenet
years ago was dismantling and drastically reducing the relevance of
Usenet in whole, saving many ISP's a buck in the mean time.

Am Donnerstag, 12. Mai 2022, um 00:38:01 Uhr schrieb Monty Solomon:

> Online services that receive "detection orders" under the pending
> European Union legislation would have "obligations concerning the
> detection, reporting, removal and blocking of known and new child
> sexual abuse material, as well as solicitation of children, regardless
> of the technology used in the online exchanges," the proposal
> says. The plan calls end-to-end encryption an important security tool
> but essentially orders companies to break that end-to-end encryption
> by whatever technological means necessary.

That is just the next step in more surveillance. We already have
internet censorship by DNS in the EU, now the government also wants to
look at what people are transferring.