Canada now has a clear model to follow for implementing its own online harms legislation — Bill C-63 — that will undermine fundamental rights to digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption.
A document leaked yesterday by the news portal netzpolitik.org reveals for the first time which messenger and chat services are to be labelled as “high risk” according to the EU Council Presidency’s proposal of a Child Sexual Abuse Regulation. A “high risk” classification would allow issuing chat control bulk scanning orders to a provider, aimed at searching for potentially illegal chat content. According to Member of the European Parliament and shadow rapporteur Dr Patrick Breyer, “the leaked document proposes that enabling “anonymous profiles or access without an account” should be considered a risk factor, as well as offering “encrypted messaging” or common interactive functionality such as direct messages, user posts or user comments. The document dates back to February, but an updated version from 10 April stipulates similar criteria.”
Dr Breyer notes that, ”Privacy-friendly communication services such as Protonmail which can so far be used anonymously are to become the most extremely monitored services by imposing chat control scanning on them. So far securely encrypted messenger services such as Signal are to be turned into bugs in our pockets by imposing ‘client-side scanning’.
“EU governments want to go to war against the confidentiality and security of our digital communications as such. Everything that makes up the internet and digital communication, all of the modern reality of the internet is considered a ‘risk’ and to be combatted in the opinion of the EU interior ministers.”
