Convenient. It’s a classic strategy: you use an issue that is very emotional and has wide-ranging popular support: protection of the state by the Stasi, anti-jewish sentiment by the Nazis, islamism during 9/11 to get your foot in the door. This kind of thing would never even be voted on if it were about detecting tax evasion or speeding.
Once you have the ability (hardware and software) to rapidly deploy AI models to scan messages and media both on-device and on provider’s servers, you can easily drop other models. Historically, this kind of power always expands. There is no requirements for these to be open-source or even auditable.
Don’t like LGBT? Flag all people that talk about it. Don’t like muslims? Flag all people talking about it. Don’t like a particular political party? Flag all people talking about it. Maybe even: want to find dirt on your political opponents?
This is the door to mass-surveillance. I hope people recognize this, and I hope we don’t turn the EU into an authoritarian state with a lack of free speech, such as the UK is currently heading.
In June 2024 an extremely narrow “blocking minority” of EU governments prevented the EU Council from endorsing chat control. Chat control proponents achieved 63.7% of the 65% of votes threshold required in the Council of the EU for a qualified majority.
Minor changes to the proposal are on the table in Council to woo critical governments: […]
“With Thorn, Kutcher entered the market for surveillance technology: In 2020, the organization launched „Safer,“ which claims to be the „first comprehensive third-party CSAM [child sexual abuse material] detection platform“.”
Convenient. It’s a classic strategy: you use an issue that is very emotional and has wide-ranging popular support: protection of the state by the Stasi, anti-jewish sentiment by the Nazis, islamism during 9/11 to get your foot in the door. This kind of thing would never even be voted on if it were about detecting tax evasion or speeding.
Once you have the ability (hardware and software) to rapidly deploy AI models to scan messages and media both on-device and on provider’s servers, you can easily drop other models. Historically, this kind of power always expands. There is no requirements for these to be open-source or even auditable.
Don’t like LGBT? Flag all people that talk about it. Don’t like muslims? Flag all people talking about it. Don’t like a particular political party? Flag all people talking about it. Maybe even: want to find dirt on your political opponents?
This is the door to mass-surveillance. I hope people recognize this, and I hope we don’t turn the EU into an authoritarian state with a lack of free speech, such as the UK is currently heading.
If I remember correctly this did not pass.
Unfortunately it’s not quite dead yet:
Who are these “proponents”? I.e. it looks like this is a pretty strong lobbying effort, who’s bankrolling it?
One of those proponents is, bizarrely, Ashton Kutcher.
Yeahhhhh … not so bizarrely though.
“With Thorn, Kutcher entered the market for surveillance technology: In 2020, the organization launched „Safer,“ which claims to be the „first comprehensive third-party CSAM [child sexual abuse material] detection platform“.”