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Planned EU laws on child sexual abuse have sparked a privacy row. Why?

Published

8 months ago

October 22, 2023

Planned EU laws on child sexual abuse have sparked a privacy row. Why?

Some have argued the proposed EU law could usher in mass surveillance in the bloc through the scanning of all communications, including encrypted messages.

Rhiannon was just thirteen when she was groomed online, coerced and sexually abused.

Her perpetrator was charged, but the impact of his crimes runs deep.

“I didn’t speak about my abuse for a very long time,” Rhiannon, a survivor and head of advocacy at the Marie Collins Foundation, told Euronews. “I suffered with anxiety, panic attacks, depression, self-harm and suicide attempts.”

Today, at 33, she lives in the knowledge that images and videos of her abuse are still circulating online. But she speaks out, calling for stronger regulation to clamp down on sexual predators.

On Thursday, European Union ministers will discuss sweeping new laws proposed by the European Commission to tackle child sexual abuse online and to ensure crimes, such as those committed against Rhiannon, are not re-lived day after day on the Internet.

A British citizen, Rhiannon says the proposed EU regulation together with the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which will soon become law, are critical in the global fight against child sexual abuse.

The EU’s planned laws would use emerging technologies to detect new and existing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and child grooming activities, and would give national authorities the power to oblige digital services to scan users’ communications, including encrypted messages.

But a bitter row has erupted, pitting child protection advocates against digital rights lobbies, who claim it will instigate a mass surveillance regime and spell the end of digital privacy as we know it. Supporters say failing to pass the regulation would leave criminals undetected and big tech unregulated.

Between both camps is a tightrope that is proving difficult to tread: how to catch child abusers without undermining our privacy online.

Are the technologies mature enough?

To detect existing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) known to law enforcement, the Commission has proposed using the so-called perceptual hash function, which takes a fingerprint, or hash, of harmful files and detects replicates across the internet.

But academic experts warn that perpetrators can easily manipulate images to dodge detection, and that innocent users could be wrongfully accused: “The problem is that it’s very easy to break the hash by changing one pixel or even by slightly cropping the image,” professor Bart Preneel, a cryptography expert at KU Leuven university, explained. “It’s also possible for a perfectly legitimate image to be flagged as a false positive.”

The Commission wants to set up an EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse in the Hague, where staff would be hired to manually filter content flagged as illegal in order to avoid flooding law enforcement agencies with false positives.

But civil society organisation ECPAT International says there is sufficient evidence that perceptual hash technologies do work.

“These technologies are not merely promising; they are proven. Hash-based methods have been effective for over a decade, enabling swifter action against illegal content and aiding law enforcement. For example, more than 200 companies use PhotoDNA technology to prevent their services from being used to spread child sexual abuse materials,” an ECPAT spokesperson said.

The Commission also wants to use artificial intelligence (AI) to detect newly created CSAM as well as to flag behavioural patterns that could amount to child grooming. Preneel told Euronews these methods would pose an even greater risk of false incrimination.

“Even if we reduce the error rate to 1%, with billions of images sent in the EU every day we could be looking at tens of millions of daily false positives,” Preneel warned. “We could be incriminating innocent people, accusing them of the most serious of crimes.”

Preneel also warns teenagers voluntarily and legally sharing nude images amongst each other could be wrongfully criminalised.

But while recognising that language-based AI models to detect grooming behaviour still need maturing, ECPAT says AI has been successfully deployed to detect new CSAM with “low error rates”.

“CSAM detection tools are specifically trained not to find legal images,” the ECPAT spokesperson explained. “These tools are trained on known CSAM, adult pornography and benign images, particularly to distinguish between them and to keep benign imagery from being misinterpreted as CSAM.”

Mié Kohiyama, a survivor and co-Founder of the Brave Movement from France who, like Rhiannon, advocates for stronger regulation, says the prevalence of child abuse images and videos online means the European Union has a responsibility to take action.

“More than 60% of these images are hosted on European servers, so we have a responsibility to act upon it,” she explained. “Detection is key, and removal is key.”

Would the new rules undermine privacy?

The most contested aspect of the Commission’s proposal is the obligation on tech companies to deploy client-side scanning (CSS) technology to scan the messages of users, including end-to-end encrypted communications on platforms such as Meta’s Whatsapp, when a risk is identified.

This would mean the encrypted messages, pictures, emails and voice notes of users could be tapped into.

Privacy advocates warn this amounts to a serious breach of people’s right to privacy online, and could be easily manipulated by malicious actors. CSS was deployed briefly by Apple in 2021 to scan iCloud uploads, but was taken down within weeks when the system was hijacked.

But ECPAT International says it is important to remember that CSS operates “before data becomes encrypted.”

“It does so by flagging CSAM before it is uploaded and sent through an encrypted environment – the same way as WhatsApp, an end-to-end encrypted service, already deploys technology to detect malware and viruses,” an ECPAT spokesperson said.

Critics also warn undermining encryption could set a dangerous precedent for authoritarian regimes, who could manipulate the technology to detect criticism and target dissidents.

Mié says such scaremongering is simply a means of diverting attention from the real issue.

“This regulation would have safeguards,” she said. “Europe is a democracy, not a dictatorship. And let’s not be naive: in a dictatorship, when you want to spy on citizens you do spy on citizens. You don’t need a new regulation.”

Can EU ministers find a compromise?

The proposed regulation has torn EU capitals, with many concerned about the technologies’ maturity and the threat to consumer privacy. Ministers may choose to green-light certain aspects of the text, while putting other plans on hold until technologies have sufficiently matured.

Mié and Rhiannon told Euronews ministers should avoid bowing to the pressure of big tech and digital lobbies. They say the steep rise in abusive material shows that tech companies’ voluntary measures to detect and take down content are clearly insufficient. A study released on Tuesday by the WeProtect Global Alliance suggests reported child sexual abuse material has increased by 87% since 2019.

“Tech companies design their products to entice children and engage them for as long as possible. If that’s their model, it has to be a safe environment for children,” Rhiannon said.

“The model of self-regulation for tech companies hasn’t worked, this is clear from the number of children being abused. We have to legislate on this issue, we have to force the hand of tech companies to protect children,” she added.

Mié also believes the bloc has a responsibility to protect survivors of digital-assisted abuse from the re-traumatisation of knowing images of their abuse are being viewed every day.

“These survivors are afraid of everything. They’re not able to leave their homes. For some of them, they are afraid even of using the Internet. These are people that are totally marginalised from society,” she said. “We have to protect them. We have to protect children. It has to come first in everybody’s mind.”

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World

Biden is making appeals to donors as concerns persist over his presidential debate performance

Published

5 hours ago

June 29, 2024

Press Room

Biden is making appeals to donors as concerns persist over his presidential debate performance

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden is looking to recapture his mojo and reassure donors at a Saturday fundraiser that he is fully up to the challenge of beating Donald Trump.

The 81-year-old’s troubling performance at the first presidential debate Thursday rattled many Democrats, who see Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as an existential threat to U.S. democracy. Biden’s meandering answers and struggles to respond to Trump prompted The New York Times editorial board to declare Friday that he should exit the race and that staying in would be a “reckless gamble.”

Biden and his wife, Jill, planned to attend an afternoon campaign meeting in East Hampton, New York, the Long Island beach town where the real estate firm Zillow prices the median home at $1.9 million. Scheduled later was an evening fundraiser in Red Bank, New Jersey.

In the aftermath of Thursday night’s debate, Biden flashed more vigor in speeches in North Carolina and New York on Friday, saying he believes with “all my heart and soul” that he can do the job of the presidency.

The Biden campaign said it has raised more than $27 million on Thursday and Friday, including $3 million at a New York City fundraiser focused on the LGBTQ+ community.

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Jill Biden told supporters Friday that he said to her after the debate, “You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.” The first lady then said she responded to him, “Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.”

The Democratic president still needs to allay the fears stirred by the debate as it seeped into the public conscience with clips and memes spreading on the internet and public pressure for him to bow out of the race.

Democratic donors across New York, Southern California and Silicon Valley privately expressed deep concerns about the viability of Biden’s campaign in the wake of his debate performance.

In a series of text message chains and private conversations, they discussed the short list of possible replacements, a group that included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris.

But on Friday, there was no formal push to pressure Biden to step aside and some suspected there never would be given the logistical challenges associated with replacing the presumptive nominee just four months before Election Day.

Some donors noted they were going to pause their personal giving. They said receipts from Biden’s weekend fundraiser would almost certainly be strong because the tickets were sold and paid for before the debate.

World

World reaction to US presidential debate: Mockery from China and Russia, concern from allies

Published

5 hours ago

June 29, 2024

Press Room

World reaction to US presidential debate: Mockery from China and Russia, concern from allies

America’s adversaries didn’t just think President Biden got pummeled in Thursday’s debate, they claim the United States was the real loser.

Russia, China, Iran and others weighed in after Biden’s faltering performance left viewers stunned. Media outlets in those countries, many of which are government-run, seized on the debate debacle to criticize the U.S.

“Every outlet, big and small, carries a piece describing what happened,” Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital. “Some have more than one. Most of them, if not all, are derogatory of both candidates and mocking America.”

“What [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is seeing is that the American Society is deeply fractured and consumed by its own problems,” Koffler said. “Putin likely believes that Russia wins either way, no matter who wins, because he expects the U.S. to plunge into chaos in the aftermath of the elections, because the country is so divided and polarized.”

“Bottom line, Moscow feels confident that the societal crisis that has engulfed the U.S. is good for Russia,” she added.

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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that Putin “was too bored to wake up and watch the U.S. debate,” but that “we have seen media reports about these debates.”

Peskov added that the Kremlin has made no attempt to “assess this debate” or make “official conclusions” and insisted that Russia has “never interfered in the election campaigns of the United States.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un visit the Vostochny Сosmodrome in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, September 13, 2023. (Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Kremlin via Reuters/File Photo)

Outside the Kremlin, Russian media have reportedly touted the debate as a victory for Russia, with Putin positioned to dictate terms in the war in Ukraine – especially if Donald Trump were to win the White House.

They highlighted Biden’s “half-open mouth, unblinking eyes” and “blank expression on his face.”

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“This is how Joe Biden appeared before an audience of millions,” Russian state TV New York bureau chief Valentin Bogdanov said on Kremlin-backed RT.

The news report especially focused on the reaction from CNN, calling the anchors “powerless” and the Democratic Party in the throes of a “deep panic,” according to East2West.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban jointly meet the press after their talks in Budapest, Hungary, May 9, 2024. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via Getty Images)

China also took an unfavorable view of the debate. Official media appeared to generally ignore it, but the state-run Global Times labeled it “the most chaotic presidential debate ever” and “like a reality show” while also highlighting the times Biden and Trump talked about China, according to the BBC.

The Global Times most specifically took issue with Trump blaming Beijing for “the raging COVID-19 epidemic and U.S. economic woes.”

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State-owned Beijing News claimed that the debate exposed both candidates’ shortcomings, with a “habitually confused” Biden and Trump spreading “rumors” instead of answering questions directly.

The Xinhua news agency framed the debate within the context of an America “weary of another Biden-Trump match-up” and focusing on Biden’s “several verbal slips” and “unclear” speech, while hitting Trump for failing to answer questions directly while providing statements that “contained many exaggerations and falsehoods.”

President Joe Biden (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ week in Woodside, California, on November 15, 2023. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese social media personalities were even more pointed. Former state media editor Hu Xijin on social media platform X mocked the U.S. presidential debate for proving “very entertaining for many Chinese people,” according to Newsweek.

“Objectively speaking, the low-quality performance of these two old men was a negative advertisement for Western democracy,” he wrote.

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Other social media users described the debate as a “disaster,” “train wreck” and “waste of time, though it should be noted that Chinese media has regularly tried to paint the U.S. as a country in turmoil with an uncertain political future.

Iran’s Republic News Agency did not appear to focus much on the debate as the country holds its own presidential elections this weekend, which dominated coverage, but Middle East expert and The Foreign Desk editor-in-chief Lisa Daftari warned that the mediocre showing at the debate will interest all of America’s rivals.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leads mourners in prayer

In this photo released by the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center with black turban, leads a prayer over the flag-draped coffins of the late President Ebrahim Raisi and his companions who were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday in a mountainous region of the country’s northwest, at the Tehran University campus, during a funeral ceremony for them in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, May 22, 2024. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

“Any American adversary may look at President Biden’s performance as a reminder that the leader of the free world is currently less than competent,” Daftari said. “It’s always been the case that the United States has the ability to defend its interests and bring about stability throughout the world just through deterrence and proper rhetoric and positioning.”

“That has not always been the case with the Biden administration, and [Thursday] night’s performance allows for an even more extreme perception of American weakness,” she added.

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“We are looking at many precarious global crises right now, including China invading Taiwan, Iran’s regime possessing and/or using nuclear weapons, Iran’s regime continuing its proxy wars against Israel and Western assets in the region [and] Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine,” Daftari said. “Of course, any one of these current crises may find more momentum between now and the election.”

Reaction even in allied nations was less than glowing, starting with Polish Foreign Minister Radslaw Sikorski’s cryptic message on X, which some have taken to be an unfavorable comparison between Biden and the great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Giorgia Meloni (l-r), Prime Minister of Italy, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan, Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Charles Michel, EU Council President (hidden), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Emmanuel Macron, President of France, Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission President, and U.S. President Joe Biden, watch parachutists at the G7 summit; Biden watches the parachutists on the far right. (Photo by Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images)

“Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor, but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commodus (He, from the Gladiator) whose disastrous rule started Rome’s decline),” Sikeorski wrote. “It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset.”

French news outlet Le Monde described that debate as a “terrible storm” and bemoaned Biden’s obsession with trying to “push his opponent off his hinges” by mocking Trump’s answers to questions, the BBC reported.

German outlet Der Spiegel compared the debate to “a car accident” and half-heartedly applauded both candidates for the “theatrical performance” while claiming that supporters on both sides will feel that their candidate did their job.

Another outlet, Die Welt, lamented that Biden was not an exciting candidate but one who had “common sense and a stable personality” who would keep “normalcy” in the White House.

Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.

World

German AfD party opens convention after strong election showing

Published

6 hours ago

June 29, 2024

Press Room

German AfD party opens convention after strong election showing

The Alternative for Germany opened a convention on Saturday after a strong performance in the recent European election, as protesters gathered outside.

Opponents held large-scale protests as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party opened a convention on Saturday following a strong showing in the recent European elections.

A heavy police presence was in place in the western city of Essen as AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla are expected to seek another term in office.

German media report that up to 100,000 people were expected at a string of protests and other events over the weekend against the AfD.

Early on Saturday morning, a group of protesters had attempted to get through a barrier to the conference but were pushed back by police using pepper spray and batons.

Police also say there were incidents where masked demonstrators attacked officers, leading to arrests.

Protestors staged sit-ins on streets and crossings near the convention hall – with several AfD politicians saying they were escorted to the venue by police.

As the meeting opened, Alice Weidel told those gathered that “what is going on out there has nothing to do with democracy.”

Local authorities had attempted to prevent the AfD rally but lost their case in court.

Police said around 5,000 people participated in an anti-AfD rave titled “Bass against Hatred” on Friday evening.

AfD finished second in the recent elections for the European Parliament, taking 15.9% of the total vote.

Their success came despite a recent series of scandals and setbacks.

A particularly strong showing in the former communist eastern part of Germany has bolstered the party’s hopes of emerging as frontrunners in upcoming state elections.