Jaap-Henk Hoepman and Frederik Borgesius will give a presentation in the Dutch Parliament

Wednesday evening 11 October, Prof Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius and Prof Jaap-Henk Hoepman will give a presentation for the Committee on Digital Affairs of the Dutch Parliament.

The topic is 'Client Side Scanning', in the context of the proposal for an EU regulation to combat child abuse and the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The proposal enables authorities to require major communication service providers such as WhatsApp, iMesage (Apple), Gmail and Zoom to check all messages for child sexual abuse material or attempted grooming.

Prof Zuiderveen Borgesius and Prof Hoepman will convey their concerns about the proposal.

Child abuse is a heinous crime, and it is hugely important that action is taken against it. But the proposed EU regulation raises serious questions. The proposal disproportionately restricts the right to confidential communications and other fundamental rights. The communications of hundreds of millions of innocent Europeans would be monitored for the authorities. Furthermore, detecting unknown child pornography material and grooming leads to too many 'false positives', and thus unjustified accusations. Authorities will not be able to assess all those false positives. Therefore, the proposed regulation will not be effective. This is another reason why the proposal is disproportionate.

Here you can see the schedule for the meeting, and you can watch the video of the meeting (in Dutch) https://www.tweedekamer.nl/debat_en_vergadering/uitgelicht/rondetafelgesprek-over-technieken-om-online-kindermisbruik-te).

For more info read Jaap-Henk's blog:
https://blog.xot.nl/2023/10/04/ddos-ing-client-side-scanning/index.html