The EU meets this Thursday to discuss the future of Chat Control 2.0 and stop online child abuse

Those responsible for the Ministries of the Interior of the member countries of the European Union (EU) will meet this Thursday to debate the regulations that seek to weaken end-to-end encryption (E2EE, in English) to stop content of sexual abuse and exploitation children’s ‘online’ with the system known as Chat Control 2.0.

The system proposed by the European Commission and supported by some member countries that allows the generalized chat control and conversations from messaging applications such as WhatsApp or Messenger, which currently implement E2EE.

Although encryption is a security measure implemented by the vast majority of communication platforms, many European countries question it because they consider that it prevents criminal investigations by not providing access to the content exchanged.

E2EE is an encryption system that protects the content of a communication, so that only the sender and receiver of a message can see its content, preventing third parties or the company responsible for the application from which it is sent from accessing it. him.

Despite the advantages in relation to protection and security that cryptography offers, countries in the European Union criticize it because they consider that it can benefit criminals, terrorists or pedophilessince this format makes police investigations difficult.

For this reason, in Europe the ‘Regulation establishing standards to prevent and combat the sexual abuse of minors’, known as Chat Control 2.0. This is legislation that would allow authorities to access users’ private conversations and with which EU countries intend to stop the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM, in English).

At the moment there is a regulation which allows American communication service providers, such as Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, iCloud, Gmail or Facebook, to scan messages voluntarily, known as Chat Control 1.0, as German MEP Patrick Breyer, who opposes this legislation, recalls on his website.

SPAIN, IN FAVOR

Compared to the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic or Poland, which are against this regulation, countries such as Portugal, France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Denmark, Belgium, Malta, Slovakia, Croatia, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia and Lithuania have been in favor of Control Chat 2.0.

Spain is another of the countries that support this tooldespite the fact that its Constitution currently determines the opposite, as indicated in Article 18 of Section 1. Of fundamental rights and public freedoms. The third section of this states that “the secrecy of communications is guaranteed, and especially of postal, telegraphic and telephone communications, except by judicial resolution.”

Although the proposed regulation is unconstitutional, Spain supports “the most extreme and conservative positions”, as pointed out by the network of specialists and activists in defense of digital rights XNet, which rejects this model and considers that with it “the privacy is in danger.”

This is demonstrated by a document leaked by Wired in May last year, in which Spain’s Ministry of the Interior acknowledged that “it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption.”

“It is imperative that we have access to data” and that “we have the capacity to analyze them”, regardless of their volume and recommending that the detection of harmful material “be carried out both in interpersonal communications and in publicly accessible content”, it is indicated in this writing. The letter also It is recognized that it is necessary “to have the necessary technical, human, innovation and training resources.”

Likewise, this institution maintains that, according to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, “in all actions related to children, whether undertaken by public authorities or in private institutions, the best interests of the child will be a primary consideration”, thus underlining your support for Chat Control 2.0 to remove CSAM contents.

YOU DISAGREE

Despite the fact that the Regulation on child sexual abuse has sparked criticism at a global level, that there are countries that do not approve it and that the European Parliament voted against it in October last year, the conversations between those responsible for the Interior are have maintained in these months. Now, the Justice and Home Affairs Council – within the Council of the European Union – has confirmed that it will return to this issue this Thursday, December 12.

On its agenda, the Council has noted that there will be a meeting of Interior Ministers and that the Presidency will try to reach “a general orientation” on the legislative proposal to combat child sexual abuse, as it has shared on its website.

Before the imminent meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, Austria and Slovenia have shared their position in relation to the regulation and have indicated that They will opt for neutrality, so they will abstain from voting for or against the proposal.

“In the negotiations so far, Austria has consistently advocated that the proposed measures be designed in accordance with fundamental rights,” as well as “maintaining the confidentiality of interpersonal communications, in particular end-to-end encryption,” he said. mentioned this country in a document dated this Monday.

With this, he stressed that, during the negotiations, “he has constantly advocated that the proposed measures be designed in a way that respects the fundamental rights” of users to preserve your privacy. “The planned measures should not involve general surveillance of all interpersonal communications, therefore, it is necessary to continue working on the detection order,” he considered.

Slovenia, for its part, has said that, although it “recognizes the need to fight against child sexual abuse both online and offline” and appreciates the efforts made by the Spanish, Czech, Swedish and Hungarian Presidencies to reach an agreement , considers that the proposed text “still does not achieve the appropriate balance between the effectiveness of the proposed regulation, the guarantee of proportionality and respect for fundamental rights.”

With this, he recognizes that his main concern since the beginning of the deliberations has to do with the provisions “that introduce a detection order” and that would allow the authorities interfere with user communications.

Thus, in accordance with its Constitution, this country has noted that “privacy can only be suspended for a limited time on the basis of a court order when necessary for the initiation or development of a criminal proceeding, as well as for security reasons.” national”. For this reason, he will also abstain from this Thursday’s vote.