Tech world may face huge fines if it doesn't scrub CSAM from encrypted chats

Tech companies could be fined $25 million (£18 million) – or ten percent of their global annual revenue – if they don't build suitable mechanisms to scan for child sex abuse material (CSAM) in end-to-end encrypted messages and an amended UK law is passed. The proposed update to the Online Safety bill [PDF], currently working …

[Abominator]

I get the intentions, but this is so baldy thought through.

Let be clear. The government are talking about:

1) Building in filters to detect and report child abuse

2) Filters are normally models, typically AI based these days

3) The models need training on validated data sets, which has to be the real thing to avoid biases. You can't just train it on legal porn.

The government is going to licence tech firms to hold child porn and train models against this? Whats to say this illegal content is then distributed illegally by the same tech firms.

This is completely disgusting and I can't think of someone who would even want to work on such models. It would be a harrowing role.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never ending argument.

Because it is a thing wanted by those that don't understand math

Because math is not something that 'politics' can change.

Because unbreakable encryption already exist, laws cannot undo time.

The most evil thing in pandoras box was hope, to prolong suffering.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Maybe this is the case already and I'm out of touch...

From the government's perspective surely the better way to go is to supply the hash libraries to Computer Repair Shops who will be put under obligation to scan all customer hard drives that come in for repair? Some kind of law would then have to be passed in similar form to TV Retailers having to inform TV Licensing of TV sales.

Maybe the likes of PC World might be already under such a scheme?

[tip pc]

You are all Guilty

You are all guilty.

the crime may not be defined as yet but you are guilty of it regardless.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing about pedo spreaders is that they need to advertise their presence - otherwise they can't spread. From a 2019 NYT article "The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?"

With so many reports of the abuse coming their way, law enforcement agencies across the country said they were often besieged. Some have managed their online workload by focusing on imagery depicting the youngest victims. “We go home and think, ‘Good grief, the fact that we have to prioritize by age is just really disturbing,’” said Detective Paula Meares, who has investigated child sex crimes for more than 10 years at the Los Angeles Police Department.

So where is the bottleneck here? It seem to be bottleneck is the budget devoted to following through with the already overflowingly abundant digital evidence to make arrests and prosecute. Why is budget so insufficient? Doesn't hurt the bottom line of digital content owners?

AFAIC Ceasar can have what is due unto him for his digital content, but this cynical twisting of the truth is very damaging to many parties, from the children who actually need help to businesses and UK government agencies using consumer communication software they believed to be be secure only to find it has been back-door-hacked by bad guys.

[Justthefacts]

But this is already EU policy…,,

This is already full EU law and policy. “Temporarily” they allowed companies not to comply:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32021R1232

But it’s coming into force pretty damn soon. EU folks had 8 weeks public consultation to protest….the last day of which was, quite literally, yesterday.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_2976

You know what the blocker was? Certain countries complained that the legislation would prevent “consensual sexual activities in which children may be involved and which can be regarded as the normal discovery of sexuality in the course of human development”. Clause 6.

*17* out of the 28 EU member states define the age of consent *for sexual activity between a child and an adult* as 14 or 15 years old. Yes. You read that correctly. 14 years old.

https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements/consent-sexual-activity-adult

Remainers really don’t know what they voted for.

[Richard 12]

Almost everyone thinks everyone else thinks like them

Given how incessant the "Everyone is a paedophile who will abuse children unless monitored all the time" wailing is from the Government.

There's only one conclusion.

Think of the children - Lock her up, right now!

[johnrobyclayton]

I am a bad actor - please help

Can someone send me all of these hash databases and deep learning models that are being developed to identify bad files or content?

For file hashes I can create innocuous files whose hashes collide with with bad file hashes, scatter them on social media, and tie up investigative resources.

For deep learning models that identifies bad content I can create an adversarial deep learning model that can generate content that the supplied deep learning model identifies. I can let the government provide the training tool for automated generation of bad content.

There are a lot of silly people that think that the range and options of information available can be constrained. It is disappointing really.

[2sideways]

dangerous technology

This is dangerous technology for human rights. For a file hash based solution consider this scenario

There is an anti-government meme circulating and the government would like to know who is sharing it (or the government creates their own anti-government meme and seeds it to social media), then they add the file hash to the database. Now whenever it is shared the authorities get notified but no further action is taken (as would be the case with child sexual images) but the government gets a picture of who is sharing this image meme, what apps they are using and who is in their networks.

Now while our government may not do this many repressive regimes might use it in this way. Once our government coerces technology companies into building this software it’s availability would be a gold mine to repressive governments.

Once the technology exists for scanning images, why not text or other documents? And presumably unencrypted communications would also be scanned.

[Al fazed]

How will reading encrypted messages will keep children safe on line ?

Children go on line without encryption.

Stopping other people from sending illicit content does not protect children on line.

This plan is another half baked attempt to improve something, which in doing will screw up so many more things, but that isn't a worry for these under-educated, part time, tech wrangling MP's........

Humiliating that the UK doesn't have a better IT outlook.............

ALF

[Piro]

It's not possible

1) It's not possible to do it with secure end-to-end encryption without scanning client-side.

2) That's not possible without mandating what effectively amounts to state-level spyware on every device.

3) You would then have to mandate the types of devices that were allowed to be sold, to ensure compliance.

1) Unreasonable.

2) Extremely unreasonable.

3) Monumentally unreasonable.

I obviously understand and sympathise 100% with the need to remove horrendous material and stop abuse, but we're doing a terrible job in the real world of protecting children we know are at risk. Maybe the police should focus on that.

[Cliffwilliams44]

The new mantra of the Tyrants

"We must protect the children (so we can trample on your rights)" is the 21st century mantra of the globalist tyrants!

[jfollows]

Plans dropped to pass the online safety bill next week

The final stages of the bill were due to take place in the House of Commons on Wednesday July 21st. but will now be shunted to later in the year, meaning that a new prime minister, home secretary and culture secretary may kill it because they don't agree with the bill in its current form.

Apparently it's Labour's "fault" for trying to get a no-confidence motion debated, resulting in the Conservatives calling their own debate on Monday 18th. July. This, in turn, caused the Northern Ireland protocol bill to be moved from Mon/Tue to Tue/Wed, and parliament goes into recess after that.