Child Sex Abuse: European Parliament Approves Law for Detecting Online Exploitation

An emergency law allowing internet companies to scan private data to detect child sex abuse has been approved by the European Parliament.

Under the European Electronics Communications Code, which was established in December 2020 and re-affirmed after an agreement reached among the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in April 2021, tech companies may now "detect, remove and report" content pertaining to child sex abuse online. The measure is a temporary derogation that will apply for a maximum of three years in countries covered by the European Parliament. 

Some 537 MEPs voted in favor of allowing internet companies to scan online data in emails, chats and messaging services. However, 133 voted against the measure citing loss of internet privacy while 24 MEPs abstained.

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The legal detection accorded to internet service providers is understood to be voluntary and the companies are expected to use technologies with the least privacy-intrusive methods when they report their findings to the authorities. The law will also not apply to data from audio communication. 

Increase in Child Sex Abuse Materials

In a statement, Birgit Sippel of Germany said that the law is a balance between protecting the privacy of internet users and detecting or stopping child sex abuse online. The MEP acknowledged that this is not a perfect system but it is a workable solution amid the increasing numbers of materials exploiting children on the internet. 

According to the European Commission, when the European Electronics Communications Code was enforced last December, reports on child sex abuse materials dropped to 53 percent because the measure did not yet have a clear directive on the role of the tech companies. As a result, thousands of cases went unnoticed in the first quarter of 2021 and made the digital landscape significantly unsafe for children.

Despite the approval, Patrick Breyer of the Pirate Party MEP disagrees with the measure. He said that allowing internet companies access to emails and other private messages will be inefficient and counter-productive, and could result in collateral damage that may include the children. 

He also said that the algorithms and AI tools used by tech companies to report these incidents to the police are prone to errors. Breyer claimed that around 86 percent of the voluntary reports made to authorities are not offensive or abusive materials.  

Children Scarred for Life

According to the Council of Europe, one in five children in the continent is a victim of sexual violence in some form, including online sexual extortion. The victims are often scarred for life and will never discuss their experiences. About a third of the children will live in fear, shame or guilt, impacting their relationships when they become adults.  

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In 2017, the Internet Watch Foundation stated that Europe has become the global hub for child sex abuse online, eclipsing North America. The experts said that 60 percent of sexual abuse content involving children on the internet comes from European countries while North American countries significantly dropped as a resource because of the efforts of their governments to work with internet companies.