Nothing to Hide

A proposal for the EU by Hungary to combat Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) being shared through the internet, is for applications to detect, report and remove it. In order to do this, a user would have to consent to having all of their content scanned prior to any end-to-end encryption, and if they don't, they won't be allowed to use the application.

What could go wrong?

Obviously, the applications themselves are opposed to this because they don't want to do at curation, as it makes them liable for the content that is on their platforms. It also opens them up to a host of laws bad liabilities that will lead to them being accountable, and fines. However, what a massive overreach with the potential for incredible abuse. To even propose such a ridiculous concept shows just how stupid governments think we are.

Though, they probably aren't that far off.

There are probably may people who are open to government monitoring and hold the belief that "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about". Yet, the same people don't seem consider what they currently might be doing "wrong" now, what they are currently doing that could be used against them now, and what they are currently doing that might be considered wrong in the future.

I am not even talking about Al Jolson in blackface in the 1920s, but things that people felt comfortable publicly talking about five or ten years ago. Numerous stars and especially comedians have been impacted by ten year old tweets, even though at the time, millions of people were laughing along with them. What was funny to the majority, has now been deemed inappropriate by the minority.

But, just imagine what is shared in private conversations, and how it could be positioned out of context publicly? Would you like of your conversations with friends and family were made public? Because, that is what one should assume will happen when the governments look after security. And of course, the assumption should be that the applications and whoever has access to the information, are going to use it to their maximum advantage.

Quite often, when people think they are making a decision that is "good", they haven't thought about all the potential unintended consequences and risks. People might want to stop CSAM, but at what cost to personal freedoms? This doesn't mean nothing should be done of course, it just means that other ways need to be developed. Otherwise, it will create more problems than it is going to solve in a cut off the nose to spite the face process.

Before governments demand more transparency from us, I believe that they should provide full transparency of themselves. Well, as full as possible, where every transaction, every decision, and all of the working is open to be audited. They talk about "state secrets" and punish those who leak them, but should the state have secrets from its people? The people won't misuse it, will they? The excuse is of course about keeping secrets from bad actors, but the same logic applies to the CSAM bad actors, right? Maybe if there was radical government transparency across all governments, the potential for bad actors would be reduced. After all,

If they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to hide.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]