Will a CSAM scanner implementation eventually be repurposed to block politically sensitive material? Telegram is already modified by the Google Play store to block specific channels.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/25/british-counci...
Argument two: Even if you can stop 100% the transmission of CSAM materials, you are not stopping the abuse of children. Just the secondary abuse of distributing the materials.
Were I in a position of any type of authority, careers would be ending and jail time would be getting handed out like candy over this. I'm not in charge unfortunately and not enough citizens know how to react to these expansions of power until it impacts them personally.
But as soon as the capability exists, it really is a slippery slope: it's far easier to gradually expand the scope and reach by administrative changes, then it is to start the program up initially - and there's no track record of any government reasonably resisting this sort of insider threat.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-16/police-refused-to-sto...
The next phase is of course the court cases, where authorities seek legal access to the data which is collected. Usually the police win these cases to establish legal precedent. Still - your average citizen is not reading civil rights-related or tech-related news, and they have no idea this happens.
By the time your average person finds out what the newly collected data is being used for, it's far too late to do anything about it.
Then there's the political aspect, which we are not likely to ever hear about. The boss's boss's boss's boss needs a favor done, don't ask why or for whom. That data, go get it. Listen, be discreet, no email and no cell phone. This is the one which is the most scary; an authoritarian in power who wants to target the opposition. Depending on the country, that could be a list of people who disappears and is never seen again - or in the US, gets raided over dubious charges by the local police as a form of harassment.
Here is the Home Office site from the time; https://web.archive.org/web/20000510065613/http://www.homeof...
Which includes an open letter the Home Secretary wrote in defence of the bill; https://web.archive.org/web/20000601233317/http://www.homeof...
Here are the Explanatory Notes from the act itself; https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/notes#:~:text=S...
None of them mentions terrorism.
What RIPA did was made it illegal for local councils to do the kind of busy body, nosy neighbour surveillance they were already doing - unless they obtained an authority to do so. It also provided the means of redress for people wrongfully subjected to such surveillance.
In other words it introduced proper regulation of intrusive investigative techniques.
The likes of Google already have content scanners automatically censoring some messages - namely, blocking e-mails about cheap viagra.
It would be very easy to add some extra keywords for politically sensitive topics - but we've been blocking spam for 25 years and I can't recall any reports of it happening.
Of course it will. This is a certainty.