Un cop més ISOC-CAT ha signat aquest nou comunicat per tal d’evitar que s’imposi per regulació l’escaneig al client.
Podeu signar individualment aquí: https://www.globalencryption.org/2024/05/joint-statement-on-the-dangers-of-the-may-2024-council-of-the-eu-compromise-proposal-on-eu-csam/
Extret del document publicat per la Global Encryption Coalition: EU’s CSA Regulation: what is the current state of play? Last updated 11 June 2024
Context:
The Presidency of the Council of the EU is currently held by Belgium. This means that representatives of the government of Belgium are, until the end of June 2024, responsible within the Council for laws including the draft Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR).
So far, there has been no official Council position (“General Approach”) on the CSAR due to a lack of agreement by Member States. In particular, objections to unlawful mass surveillance of private communications and to breaking encryption have been raised by more than half the EU’s national governments throughout the process. The Parliament has had their position agreed since Nov. 2023.
Since their Presidency began in January 2024, the Belgians have explored several ways to ‘break’ the Council block, most recently with a proposal for “upload moderation” – in essence re-hashing existing (and widely-criticised) ideas under a new name. In a public document dated 7 June 2024, Belgian representatives stated that “all technical questions had been addressed in a comprehensive way,” meaning that it is now for the political level to make a decision. The Belgian presidency has indicated that they will ask Member State Ambassadors to vote to adopt the “upload moderation” plan as the official Council General Approach in a vote on 19th June 2024. If successful, this would allow the Council to enter inter-institutional negotiations (trilogues, a form of negotiation behind closed doors notorious for its opacity) with the European Parliament.
What’s wrong with the latest Council Presidency proposal (“upload moderation” idea)? (Based on text 9093/24, 28 May 2024)
- Breaking encryption: “Upload moderation” is the term being used by the Belgian Presidency for their proposal to scan photos, videos and URLs at the point of user “upload” (i.e. when you select an image to send via a private message). However, as emphasised in a May 2024 statement from the Global Encryption Coalition, the only technology could achieve this is client-side scanning (CSS). CSS has been unanimously criticised by cybersecurity experts for being an unacceptably dangerous software which amounts to distributed spyware. These techniques would still amount to breaking encryption – putting everyone’s digital communications and transactions at risk across the EU. The Belgian Presidency have denied this, falsely claiming “No detection on E2EE data” (p.4);
- Illegal mass surveillance: At a recent meeting of EU Member States’ permanent representatives, the Legal Service of the EU Council (CLS) informed delegations that the serious issues of access to sensitive communications without reasonable suspicion remain in this latest “upload moderation” proposal, meaning that their legal opinion that the CSA Regulation would amount to unlawful mass surveillance remains valid;
- Be scanned – or get banned: EDRi has raised serious concerns that this latest proposal is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It puts a new name on the same mass surveillance and encryption-breaking plan. The proposal is also based on faulty statistics and flawed logic, essentially urging people to ‘consent’ to be scanned by dodgy AI technologies, or be banned from sharing pictures, videos and URLs. This tactic is exactly the sort of manipulative Big Tech dark patterns that the EU is supposed to be fighting against;
- Legal inconsistencies with GDPR and DSA: CDT explains that the consent mechanism in the latest proposal creates serious legal inconsistencies with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Digital Services Act (DSA), including the issues of minors’ consent and the removal of illegal material.
La entrada ISOC-CAT s’adhereix al comunicat conjunt sobre la perillosa proposta del Consell EU SCAM se publicó primero en Catalan Chapter of the Internet Society.