A new EU proposal would enable courts to force tech companies to scan their users’ images, videos, and texts in search of child abuse or grooming. But the proposed law has no exemptions for users' private messages.
when she’s in the Dutch Senate, Arda Gerkens spends her time helping tech companies delete child sexual abuse material buried in their platforms. For seven years, the senator has run the nonprofit foundation Online Child Abuse Expert Agency, known by its Dutch acronym EOKM. With her 20-person team, Gerkens offers judgment-free advice and free automated detection tools to businesses, from image to file hosting sites. Most companies want to keep their networks clean, she says.
Encrypted messengers protect children as well as adults, she says. Every year, EOKM’s help line receives several pleas from minors who have been blackmailed by hackers to create and send explicit images after their non-encrypted social media accounts have been hacked. Gerkens is worried that breaking encryption would mean these cases become more common. “[If] you have a backdoor into encryption, it works both ways,” she says.
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