More Censorship: EU wants to search all smartphones

Ursula von der Leyen failed in Germany with her major attack on the internet. Now, under the same pretext and under your leadership, an even more violent project is being put forward at the EU level. Under a bill now on the table in Brussels, photos and messenger messages on smartphones should be searched automatically.

If the responsible AI suspects child abuse is being portrayed or criminals are making contact with children, the content should be forwarded directly to law enforcement authorities. Apple had already wanted to introduce a similar procedure but had to abandon it after the fierce protest. The criticism remains the same: “The mass scanning not only attacks confidential communications at the grassroots level but would also be ineffective: criminals are already using distribution channels that would not be affected by these scans and will easily escape the scans in the future, ” he said it in one opinion of the Chaos Computer Club.

Don’t underestimate error rates

So while it’s quite unlikely that perpetrators would actually be found this way, hundreds of millions of users would suffer massive violations of fundamental rights. Because no one knows for sure whether the message just written, accompanied by the private photo, will not end up at the next agency. Because the AI, which is responsible for monitoring the devices, makes mistakes.

Even the smallest percentages of misclassified content would be a huge problem here. Because in Germany alone, more than half a billion messages are sent every day, so even with an almost perfectly functioning system, the authorities would still receive thousands of messages and images every day. After all, in addition to the violation of privacy, there is always the danger of false suspicions in a very sensitive area.