The European Commission will make messengers scan correspondence to combat child pornography

The European Commission should oblige messengers to scan the communications in general. This became known from the draft version of the proposal, which EURACTIV received from insiders. Its goal is to combat the online distribution of child sexual abuse material.

“Providers of hosting services and providers of interpersonal communication services that have received a detection order shall execute it by installing and operating technologies to detect CSAM upon request by the competent judicial authority or independent administrative authority”, the draft regulation states.

The text also states that the technologies used for this should be “efficient”, “reliable enough”, “state-of-the-art” and “least interfering”, so that they can extract only the information from the communications that should be found.

Technology platforms will also be required to assess risks and carry out targeted and proportionate “reasonable mitigation measures”. They will be required to report to the national coordinating body and the newly established EU agency in The Hague.

Based on these reports, the judiciary will conduct searches. Risk assessments are also the responsibility of software vendors.

The new EU Center on Child Sexual Abuse will act as an intermediary between national authorities and platforms. Its goal is to provide companies with options for detection technologies and to manage databases with indicators of violent materials. Messengers will need to use these indicators to perform their duties.