A leaked document from the EU, proposing new regulation, describes the most sophisticated mass surveillance machinery ever deployed outside of China and the USSR. The proposal is for a new mass surveillance system that will read private text messages, not to detect CSAM, but to detect “grooming”. It would mandate scanning of encrypted messages for CSAM material. Once you open up “machines reading your text messages” for any purpose, there are no limits. Matthew Green, renowned security expert and cryptography professor, says: “Let me be clear what that means: to detect ‘grooming’ is not simply searching for known CSAM. It isn’t using AI to detect new CSAM, which is also on the table. It’s running algorithms reading your actual text messages to figure out what you’re saying, at scale.”

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