A draft European Union regulation on "the prevention of child sexual abuse" is being drafted right now. As expected, this time, too, the title of the document is meant to obscure its real content.
A regulation prepared by EU officials provides an open path to surveillance of every resident of the European Union. Under the guise of protecting children, the drafters propose that the services should have unlimited access to every message, sent over the Internet.
It is still not too late to influence the shape of the regulation. The government is currently working on a draft of Poland's position on the document. MEPs will soon vote on it.
Is an era of overt surveillance coming?
Lawyers for Ordo Iuris have completed work on an analysis of the aforementioned draft EU regulation, which is theoretically supposed to deal with combating and preventing "child sexual abuse," the real effect of which could be the introduction of unlimited surveillance and control of the Internet.
The premise of the project is to examine the content, sent between all users of digital services, through the use of technology that scans messages and detects child sexual abuse. The project thus treats everyone as a potential criminal, and ISPs will be required to hand over Internet users' private correspondence to law enforcement and other state services.
The analysis points out that the regulation is a blow not only to individual freedom and privacy, but also, for example, to the freedom of the media, where the protection of sources of information is fundamental to the work of journalists, and to professional secrecy, which is crucial, for example, in the work of lawyers and doctors who provide sensitive information on the health of their patients.
The draft EU regulation poses a serious threat to the right to privacy, freedom of expression, professional secrecy, business secrecy or confidentiality of correspondence. The entry into force of the proposed regulation will also have the effect of weakening the security of digital services and personal data.
Adoption of the project will open the way for future analysis of the behavior of the entire population based on artificial intelligence algorithms that analyze data obtained through surveillance. It could also provide an incentive for non-European governments, especially less democratic ones, to use the mechanisms envisaged in the project to combat, for example, political opposition or the Church.
PL
cyt. za informacją z dnia 11/10/2022
