BRUSSELS - The European Commission’s plan to fight the spread of child pornography by obliging messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram to install detection software is a bad idea. A group of almost 200 scientists from 26 countries, including the Netherlands, said that in an urgent letter to Brussels about its bill to oblige “high risk” messaging services to install this software, NOS reports.
“Suppose WhatsApp is seen as a ‘high-risk messaging service’ for distributing child pornography, then with the proposal as it is currently on the table, all EU citizens who use WhatsApp will receive this detection software on their phones. We believe that is disproportionate and a threat to the security and privacy of communications,” associate professor Jaap Henk Hoepman, affiliated with Radboud University and one of the authors of the letter, told the broadcaster.
If the EU was trying to fight child pornography sent by post with this bill, it would amount to checking almost every European citizen’s mail. Except more extreme, because even before instant messaging, most people didn’t send multiple letters a day.
Detection software can be a good method for tracing users of already-identified child pornography material, Hoepman said. “But the detection software must also be installed to recognize new, unknown material and to detect grooming, where adults try to seduce children.” That will require the use of artificial intelligence and the technology has not developed far enough yet, the experts said.
“You will get a lot of false alarms,” Hoepman said, pointing out that children send sexual material to each other while exploring their sexuality, and that an 18-year-old sending something to a minor is technically grooming. “All these people are, therefore, suspicious and under investigation.”
Ben van Mierlo, the national coordinator for Vice, Child Pornography, and Child Sex Tourism at the Dutch police, has similar concerns. “A grandfather sends a photo of his grandchild in the swimming pool on the family group. Detection software forwards a report to Interpol or Europol. And the sender or recipient is seen as a suspect while he or she is not.” That will also require a whole lot of manpower. “There are billions of messages being sent that need to be looked at.”
Van Mierlo added that this detection software will only work if the police also get access to encrypted messages. “If the recipient of suspicious material only receives a notification saying that this message cannot be seen, this will stop the spread. But we need evidence to be able to arrest a suspect,” he said. “Look at grooming, it’s about text and context: without insight into what is said back and forth, you don’t know whether something is done voluntarily and whether someone is indeed a minor.”
The police have been trying to gain access to encrypted messages for almost as long as they’ve existed, something privacy experts are vehemently against.
