Member States of the European Union on October 14 will be called to formally express their position on a proposal for regulation that could radically change the way we communicate online. This is the so -called chat control, the regulation to prevent and combat sexual abuse on minors, whose official name is enclosed by the acronym CSAR (Child Sexual Abuse Regulation). The idea behind the regulation is as simple as controversial: to force the messaging and e -mail platforms to scan every message, image or video, before it is sent and encrypted, to check if it contains child pornography or attempts to adapt addressed to minors. The declared purpose is to protect minors from very serious abuses, but the method proposed opens a heated discussion on the future of digital privacy in the EU territory. At the moment, the opinions of the individual European states are conflicting with about ten countries that oppose (Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium), some are undecided and about fifteen seem to be favorable including Italy, France and Spain.
How it works chat control
The CSAR regulation was presented for the first time in the spring of 2022 by the then European commissioner for internal affairs, the Swedish Ylva Johansson. The stated goal would be to prevent platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Gmail from being used to spread child pornographic images or to attempt the online adaptation of minors. To do this, applications should integrate a preventive content analysis system: each text message would be evaluated by algorithms capable of identifying suspicious phrases, while the images should be controlled via hash. Comparing the results of these preventive checks with data and information present in the databases managed by the police, an automatic reporting to the authorities in the event that correspondences were found with the materials related to the world of pedophilia and child pornography would be triggered.
From a technical point of view, this procedure is called the client side scan: it means that the control takes place directly from the service providers Before that the message is encrypted and sent to the recipient. In this way, end-to-end encryption would lose much of its usefulness, because the content has already been read and analyzed before being encrypted. Many experts underline how this dynamic is actually equivalent to introducing one backdoorthat is, a hidden access door that could be exploited by third parties: governments, intelligence services, IT criminals, and others. Even if the supporters of the regulation ensure that the system would work locally and anonymously, doubts remain on any security flaws and the real protection of personal data.
A particularly discussed point concerns the risk of false positives: non -perfect algorithms could report as suspicious conversations that actually do not contain anything illegal, exposing private communications to undue controls, including those between teenagers. Even if the platforms should theoretically anonymize data up to an official verification by the authorities, uncertainty remains strong on how these processes would work in practice.
The position of international governments and organizations
A coalition of over 60 international organizations, known as Eclag (European Child Sexual Abuse Legislation Advocacy Group), strongly supports the initiative, considering it an indispensable tool to stem the spread of child pornography and protect minors. Associations for digital rights such as the EPP (Electronic Frontier Foundation), on the other hand, denounce the risk that once created, a preventive surveillance system can also be used for other purposes, such as the control of communications of journalists, activists or political opponents, especially in countries with authoritarian governments.
The positions of the individual European states reflect the aforementioned divisions. At the moment there are a dozen countries that seem to be against the proposal: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia. Countries like Greece, Romania and Slovenia, however, remain undecided. Countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, seem to be favorable to the proposal.
The European Parliament is also deeply divided. The green and social-library parties expressed a firm opposition, claiming that “Protecting children online is possible without mass surveillance». Some right -wing groups, such as Patriots for Europe, also echoed this criticism, while MEP Conservative of the European People’s Party have raised concerns related to the protection of private communications. The result is a transversal front that makes it difficult to predict what the outcome of the formal vote will be, which could take place on 14 October.
Denmark, which holds the presidency on duty, declared the will to push for an agreement, so as to then start the negotiations with the Parliament. If the regulation is approved, digital platforms will have to radically rethink the way they manage user privacy. If, on the other hand, the need to find alternative strategies to combat a problem that remains urgent and dramatic will open.
