Tämä postaus on saatavilla myös suomeksi.
Negotiations are currently underway in the European Union on the so-called "Chat Control" proposal, which would require messaging platforms, under certain conditions, to scan the contents of their users' messages. Unfortunately, Finland appears to support the current form of the proposal at this point, but several other European countries oppose it, and there is still hope of stopping it before it becomes law.
This proposal is being presented as a means of preventing the distributation of child abuse material on the internet. While that goal is understandable, you cannot improve conditions for children using mass surveillance, and the proposal would seriously violate our right to privacy and secrecy of communication.
We as a society have known for a long time how best to ensure children's safety and wellbeing: by supporting teachers, social workers, and other people who work directly with children, by ensuring that children receive the best possible education and counseling, and by making sure that every child has several safe, reliable adults whom they can ask for help if need be. Childhood education must teach children about consent, and that they have the right to refuse touch, conversation, or similar activity that is uncomfortable or otherwise makes them feel unsafe. Unfortunately, these measures tend to receive far less attention these days than they should, given their importance.
Nowhere in the above paragraph does surveillance appear, nor will it offer any solution to child abuse. The only people who can truly and effectively help children are those who work with children — and any real solution to abuse will only succeed if it includes measures to support them. Especially now, when educational outcomes are declining and funding is being cut from schools in the name of savings, we can't allow an ineffective, rights-violating project to divert attention and resources away from childrens' basic needs. While the irony of the situation is unmistakable, it can't rightly be called funny.
It is important to also bear in mind that if child abuse material appears on the internet, in some ways the game has already been lost — the abuse has already occurred, and most of the damage caused can no longer be prevented. There is unfortunately a tendency to forget the actual children and their concrete needs almost entirely, and sometimes you get the impression that child abuse isn't actually seen as a problem as long as there is no evidence of it on the internet.
It has recently been reported that an actor linked to the Chinese government may have had access to American infrastructure meant for wiretapping phone lines. Unfortunately, I was unable to read the article linked from the above Mastodon post due to a paywall, but the message is clear from the post itself: that this particular piece of news is no surprise at all, because any intentionally included back door will also allow criminals and state-sponsored surveillance institutions access. This is something we have known for a long time, even though some would rather not admit it.
We need to learn a very serious lesson from this case, especially in light of the current geopolitical climate and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We simply cannot afford to take the risk that a foreign, hostile state might nearly effortlessly gain access to all or even some of Europe's private messages — even if no formally classified or sensitive information were leaked, individuals' personal information could be used for purposes of extortion, or to influence European politics (as Russia has already been doing for some time).
We all have a right to safe and private messaging, which any possible scanning program would seriously violate. Sometimes adults discuss very sensitive or intimate topics over chat, doctors give their patients advice based on their personal health information, parents talk about embarassing but important subjects with their kids, and none of the above want their conversations to end up in front of a stranger sitting in an office somewhere. The senstive nature of these conversations does not derive from anything criminal, but rather from the entirely natural fact that we in this society do not share absolutely every aspect of our lives with every other person. There is nothing wrong or suspicious about this, anymore than there is about closing the door while using the bathroom.
From a somewhat more personal perspective, widely implemented surveillance of messaging constitutes a direct threat to me and other people belonging to gender minorities, neurodivergent people, and those who belong to groups otherwise historically discriminated against or unjustly criminalized. In many places, content relating to queer and trans people is still considered unsuitable for children even when the content in question would be seen as entirely family-friendly if all depicted relationships were heterosexual. In Hungary and other less accepting countries, this infrastructure could very easily be used to remove LGBTQ content from the internet or to persecute queer and trans people. In some places, the only thing protecting some people's rights is the fact that nobody knows anything about them.
We absolutely need to do something about child abuse, but it needs to be something that will actually work and doesn't violate our basic rights. Chat Control as a whole must be rejected immediately, and the resources wasted on it redirected to schools, social work, and other causes that genuinely help children.