It is legislation that, if approved and under the pretext of preventing and combating sexual abuse of minors, “would put an end to the secrecy of communications in the European Union”. And our country has a prominent role in this proposal, “since it is proposed that this law be approved during the Spanish presidency of the European Union”, say the detractors of the initiative. Few European standards have raised as much dust as the one caused by this initiative, which proposes to control the audio, written, photo and video messages exchanged in messaging applications and that run thanks to the internet. The excuse for this data monitoring? Hunt pedophiles “online” when they exchange this material.
The speaker of the project, Francisco Javier Zarzalejos (PPE), with whom the Socialists have aligned themselves in this case, accuses the project’s detractors of distorting its meaning. And, he insists, like the Commissioner of the Interior, Ylva Johanson, that we are not talking about privacy here, but about childhood rights. And when the issue of encrypted messaging (WhatsApp or Telegram) is addressed, the promoters of the initiative point out that the scanning of the device would always be selective under a judicial mandate or a national authority. The intention is, with these channels, to use a technology that is as least intrusive as possible for privacy.
In this matter, the Government of Spain has aligned itself with conservative countries in terms of civil liberties, such as Hungary and Italy. At the opposite pole are countries such as Germany or the Netherlands. And it is surprising, as published by the Wire portal, which had access to a leak of the position of the 20 countries that make up the European Union with this proposal, that the majority do not hide that they are in favor of fully decrypting the content of channels with encrypted From the police’s point of view – no one escapes this – this transparency would be of great help.
No one disputes the intentions, but there are many who question the forms. And even more so when this matter of combating and preventing sexual abuse of minors “only appears in the heading of the proposal”, says Simona Levi, founder of Xnet and member of the Stop Chat Control coalition (there are 16 Spanish companies and organizations, together with dozens of others from the rest of Europe), all against this regulation. “If you read the proposal, the conclusion is clear: this is not about protecting minors, nor about hunting pedophiles; the proposal is shielded in this laudable fight to achieve total control of communications between citizens in the messaging channels”, denounces Levi.
What is proposed, they repeat from Stop Chat Control, is the same as if it were considered to eliminate the roads to put an end to traffic deaths or to put cameras in all homes to discover the perpetrators of male violence.
Levi considers that trying to fight against the sexual abuse of minors only from the field of dissemination, exchange and storage, without worrying about how this material is produced or allocating resources to education and prevention, is clearly going, with a law, against the more democratic internet; an excuse to monopolize this world by the big players who control this universe.
Stop Chat Control starts from a basic premise in its campaign against this rule: “Having a private conversation is a basic human right”. This also applies to the internet. And this breaks with the proposed law, since the rule “obliges all hosting services and providers of interpersonal communications to scan all content and then decide what to hand over to the security forces”. What will happen if this becomes a European norm? “Well, there will be a real avalanche of false alarms”, replies Levi, which the promoters of the project deny, since they trust that the system will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Levi does not see it so clearly and gives an example: “A father who sends, for example, photos of his children in the bathtub to the mother will be identified by the system as a child abuser”, warns the founder of Xnet. Or what is the same, if the EU approves this law, “personal photos and intimate conversations could be collected and stored, which is an unprecedented violation of privacy”, denounces the Stop Chat Control coalition. And he adds: “All this information will be in the hands of private companies and the EU, with the risk that this material will be exposed if there is a leak or a computer attack”, warn those opposed to the rule.
Who would benefit most from such a comprehensive law? Simona Levi is clear: “The large companies that will create or have already developed these control programs with artificial intelligence”. And there are many defenders of freedom in the cybernetic universe who denounce the modus operandi of these firms: “First they worry about reporting and warning about the serious problem of the behavior of pedophiles online and when everyone worries about it, present as the saviors with technical solutions to the problem”.