Remember EU “chat control”? It’s growing, putting out roots.
The EU’s “chat control” legislation is the most alarming proposal I’ve ever read. Taken in context, it is essentially a design for the most powerful text and image-based mass surveillance system the free world has ever seen.
— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) March 10, 2023
The author of this Twitter thread, Matthew D Green, teaches practical cryptography at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. You should read the whole thread, but I will single out this point as particularly scary:
From my reading, detection orders can be issued to *entire services* once there is a finding that the service contains abuse material.
So for example, all of Facebook Messenger (and its 1.4bn users) might hypothetically be in scope. pic.twitter.com/KjWqHZaxBD
— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) March 13, 2023
Green is replying to someone with the user name f00b4r who offers as reassurance the statement that nothing will be done without a “detection order” issued by a competent authority. I have no doubt the paperwork will be in order, but that does not reassure me. Likewise, the idea that “that service providers are not liable for the content if they comply” is phrased by f00b4r as if it softens the threat, but so far as I can see it is the threat: comply or be made bankrupt.
Perhaps we had all better trust in the fact that the United Kingdom has left the European Union so none of this cannot possibly affect us. I’m sure we’ll be fine.