[Governance] Against ‘chat control’: we can’t eliminate child abuse by eliminating privacy

[Jeremy Malcolm]

>From me in today's Guardian:

"...In Europe, the latest proposal for a “chat control” regulation put
forward by the Danish presidency would require every internet-connected
device to include government spyware, as easy to activate as Alexa or Siri.
It would scan not only for known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) but
also, in practice, would flag artwork, fan fiction, family photos and
chats, relying on unreliable AI classifiers – which scientists warn can’t
be implemented safely. ... These restrictions are driving users
underground. Since these [age verification] laws took effect, virtual
private network (VPN) usage has soared, as has usage of the privacy-centric
Tor browser, which reached its highest level ever this year – nearly 20
million daily users, six times its long-term average. This surge is a
warning sign. Tor was created by the US navy to counter authoritarian
regimes when the “open Internet” was official US policy. Now, as western
democracies restrict free communication online, they’re becoming the
authoritarians Tor was designed to circumvent, while the Tor network
becomes the new “open Internet”. ... Accepting that human rights set firm
and legitimate boundaries on police power is not minimizing or normalizing
abuse. The more governments push against this, the more they become the
authoritarians that Tor was set up to guard against, and the more essential
such tools become..."

Continue reading (no paywall):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/13/chat-control-child-abuse-internet-privacy


-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
https://jere.my
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20251013/0b02ae2f/attachment.htm>