Thanks Torsten – I think the changes made result in a more balanced statement without sacrificing relevant detail. I remain concerned at the use of the word “exponential” without reference to substantiating evidence, for the reasons I set out in my previous comment.

The session organizers and participants modified this message to better reflect the discussion at the workshop as follows:
The interplay of privacy and safety: The participants of Workshop 1a of EuroDIG believe privacy and child safety are intertwined and inseparable, advocating that legal solutions to combat child sexual abuse online must strive to optimise both. These measures should be centred on children’s rights and their best interests, as a way forward to achieve this balance.

The session organizers and participants modified this message to better reflect the discussion at the workshop as follows: CSA is currently increasing exponentially and has serious consequences for the rights and development of children. For this reason, recognising such depictions and preventing child sexual abuse should go hand in hand. Participants are concerned about the safety of users, including with regard to the potential use of CSAM detection technology. Breaches of confidential communication or anonymity are seen critically. At the same time, advantages are recognised in the regulations, e.g. with regard to problem awareness or safety by design approaches. Age verification procedures are perceived as both a risk and an advantage, with a caution on risks to anonymity and participation.

After a meeting among the workshop organizers, this message was changed as follows: Advancements in legal and regulatory measures on Child Sexual Abuse (CSA): Workshop 1a discussed three recent measures on the protection of children from online Child Sexual Abuse (CSA): the proposed EU CSA Regulation (CSAR), the new UK Online Safety Act, and the positive results from the Lithuanian Law on the Protection of Minors against detrimental effects of public information. An agreement was found on the need for better regulation in this field, emphasising the accountability of online service providers for monitoring illegal and harmful material and safeguarding minors.

From my perspective, the comments on technology take up too much space in this message. This topic was explored in more depth in another workshop. It also leaves too little room for other aspects that played a role in the exchange. Therefore, here is a suggestion to change the message:
CSA is currently increasing exponentially and has serious consequences for the rights and development of children. For this reason, recognising such depictions and preventing sexual violence should go hand in hand. Participants are concerned about the safety of users, including with regard to the potential use of technology. Breaches of confidential communication or anonymity are seen critically. At the same time, advantages are recognised in the regulations, e.g. with regard to problem awareness or safety by design approaches. Age verification procedures are perceived as both a risk and an advantage. It can improve the protection of children on the internet, limit the spread of CSA material and empower children. However, this should not be at the expense of anonymity and participation.

First, it is worrying to see messages being proposed that, according to a participant, were not articulated in the room.

Second, the “find a balance between privacy and safety” argument is outdated. The more considered view is that regulation must strive to optimize both, and must do this in the context that children and other at-risk groups are fully-fledged holders of the full set of rights, rather than reduced to being ‘objects of protection’.

Finally, the closing sentence of the current draft expresses a good principle (“These measures should be centred on children’s rights and their best interests to achieve this balance”), but should end there, for the reason set out above. Centring policy and technical measures on the rights and best interests of the individual is a necessary but insufficient condition of acceptability. Those looking for a fuller set of evaluation criteria may find the REPHRAIN Framework useful: https://bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristol.ac.uk/dist/1/670/files/2023/02/Safety-Tech-Challenge-Fund-evaluation-framework-report.pdf

Concerning the word “vicious”: the original drafter may have been thinking of the phrase “vicious circle” (a situation in which the apparent solution of one problem in a chain of circumstances creates a new problem and increases the difficulty of solving the original problem). If so, then the word “vicious” is appropriate in context, since function creep and lack of independent oversight would indeed risk creating such a situation.

Perhaps the sentence should be re-worded as follows: “Moreover, the possibility of function creep, combined with lack of independent oversight, gives rise to the risk of creating a vicious circle, in which enforcement measures create worsening outcomes for citizens. The precedent CSA regulation allows law enforcement to obtain the technical capability to monitor all European citizens in real time – a capability which, in light of Paragraph 1 above, is indistinguishable from a general monitoring obligation.”

The term “exponentially” is potentially misleading, and should not be used as a synonym for “rapidly”, unless substantiated with independently-verified data. “Exponential” means that the growth tends to infinity: a CSA prevention policy based on that assumption would almost certainly be disproportionate in practice.

It is unsafe to make the claim of exponential growth without clarifying whether it refers to instances of real-world child abuse, reports of alleged illegal content, *actual* illegal content, or prosecutions for any of the above.

As the late Prof. Ross Anderson’s paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.08958) shows, the gap between the figures cited in soundbites, and the figures for actual instances of illegal material, is extreme. As Levy and Robinson clearly  acknowledged in their 2022 paper on the same topic, “The statistic most often used to illustrate this is the number of reports received by NCMEC, which amounted to 29.4 million in 2021. However, without context this number provides little useful information and can be easily misinterpreted.”

To put it into perspective – again, based on Levy and Robinson’s own figures – the number of reports that were referred to the police represented just 0.3% of the “headline-grabbing” figure.

It is unsafe to base policy on phrases such as “exponential growth”, when the evidence demonstrates that the figures cited in support of such policies have already been used in misleading ways.

[impact]

risk assessments

[advocating that technical solutions to combat child sexual abuse must ensure a balance between the two]

This is not what was said in the room.