List of experts advising the EU on CSAM has been published
digitalcourage.social
digitalcourage.social
https://netzpolitik.org/2023/chatkontrolle-lobbyist-thorn-me...
Back when I made exceptionally bad (but not illegal) choices I publicly archived 3 supposedly worksafe 4chan boards. I found out pretty fast people still used CSAM to derail threads nearly daily. And that's when I found out that it's an impossible problem to solve for me; remedies are available if you're enterprise sized and a corporate entity, but for individuals running services the unofficial recommendation has always been "delete and pretend it never happened". That sucks, and hardly scales. PhotoDNA told me to ask again when I had a floor full of lawyers. I am to this day baffled the Fediverse hasn't died by the same mechanism. Either way, it's a disgusting way to limit who can operate services with UGC in practice.
I at least decided against hosting the entire thing pretty soon and of course still had my entire hardware seized a year later. German police are slow, and they weren't interested in even talking to me or my lawyer.
Also if they are advising on the technology of CSAM rather than the politics of it, then does it really matter where they are based?
>> "In response to a request for documents pertaining to the decision-making behind the proposed CSAM regulation, the European Commission failed to disclose a list of companies who were consulted about the technical feasibility of detecting CSAM without undermining encryption."
>> "... a list of experts who helped the Commission draft the text related to potential solutions to detect child sexual abuse material in end-to-end encrypted communications."
This doesn't sound like a list of those who supported it. Only who were consulted.
Maybe some more consideration before we start burning witches?
The challenge is that based on the advice of experts, the commission made recommendations which violate or are in conflict with end-to-end encryption.
The public deserves to know the lineage of such decision-making and (rightfully) stimulate or recommend improvements to the process.
"Based" is doing a lot of service there.
Maybe they were fully in support. Maybe they told the EU it was a terrible, stupid idea and were ignored.
At the end of the day, the EU body made the proposed regulation, and I'd like to know individuals' involvements before assuming their opinion.
F.ex. I would assume that Alex Stamos didn't tell them it was a brilliant idea
Seeing the list as a whole, however, makes me wonder if the commission or lawmakers in general have access to adequate technical expertise and representation from the industry.
to know how they're planning on managing the same issues? i'm not a fan of CSAM either but it makes sense to talk to your neighbours to know how they're handling things?
[1] https://twitter.com/bpreneel1/status/1676142898197274624
Which I think it's fair to say that, whatever their motivations and misguided goals, they do not.
At least they're still going through the usual motions of putting forward the "think of the children!" mantra, I suspect that given the current geo-political and defence environment we'll have this thrown down our collective throats in about 6 months to one year with no "advising" whatsoever, just served to us as a fait accompli in the interest of protecting the values-based order.
Come to think of it, I'm still a little surprised that they haven't dropped that mask off just yet.
And that's the problem
This is not what providers and law enforcement want, since this would amount to giving away an algorithm that smart criminals could use to pre-test their content to see if it'll trip CSAM filters. To date, organizations have been extremely cagey about giving out content hashes for CSAM as well as even the algorithms for computing them, like PhotoDNA (which recently leaked.)
The more recent proposals use two-party computation so that the client doesn't know whether any given piece of content matches. You can attach ZK proofs to the client's piece of this computation, all at fairly large (computational) cost.
Degoogle and demicrosoft and spread the word. Remember folks that used to think they’ll use chips and vaccines to spy on them? Well explain how it’s actually done via their phones and pcs with the blessing of their unelected representatives.
Why not harness a portion of the zeitgeist?
And maybe in the progress build some bridges. "You don't trust big tech? I don't trust big tech either!" (Let's have a discussion about how microchips work, though...)
Those “crackpots” have voting rights and a desire for privacy which while they may not be able to articulate well is very much valid.
And they are many.
No wonder they tried to keep this secret.
Similarly, the age limit is 18, so if you are 17, a sexy photo (or AI generated image) of your girlfriend of 17 is CSAM (though there is a defence provided you are married or in a civil partnership with said girlfriend). That's a 10-stretch.
What if you only "possess" a bunch of model weights that can produce such material when prompted to do so, just as it can produce pictures of cute puppies?
What if someone did try really hard to prevent it producing it, but it still happens to do so if you ask it to act like your deceased grandmother?
Those AI-generated materials will inevitably very easy to obtain, if not tomorrow then in a few years for sure. The laws will change accordingly as there is little point of having a law that prescribes putting too many people behind the bars.