Open letter: Hundreds of scientists warn against EU’s proposed CSA Regulation
Over 300 security researchers & academics warn against the measures in the EU's proposed Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), citing harmful side-effects of large-scale scanning of online communications which would have a chilling effect on society and negatively affect democracies. The letter remains open for signatures.
An open letter from more than 300 scientists around the world was sent to EU lawmakers on 4 July 2023 . The letter warned decision-makers against the proposed CSA regulation, citing harmful side-effects of large-scale scanning of online communications which would have a chilling effect on society and negatively affect democracies. For EU lawmakers to proceed with this dangerous law despite such warnings will show a complete disregard for scientific evidence.
The three key reasons that researchers and academics cite in the letter for not proceeding with this law are:
- Detection technologies that could be used for scanning online communications are flawed and vulnerable to attacks
- The dangerous implications of weakening end-to-end encryption, which is the only tool we have to protect our data in digital spaces
- Serious doubts about the effectiveness of the technologies imposed by this regulation, which could allow perpetrators to evade detection and move to a different platform
These concerns echo those already being raised by over 133 civil society, privacy and digital rights organisations, technology industry actors and EU’s own institutional experts, including lawyers responsible for advising EU Member State governments, the bloc’s top data protection authority, the European Parliament’s study, and the European Commission’s own Scrutiny Board.
