The European Parliament is set on combatting online child sexual abuse. This means using technology to scan and remove content. But how does this square with EU data protection rules? Learn more from the author of Parliament's report, Birgit Sippel.

data protection

technology

rights of the individual

human rights

Preventing online child abuse, while protecting personal data

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/1349512/N01-AFPS-210630-CHAB-EN.srt

It's detected through law enforcement activities

like covert investigations, but also by detecting communications

by providers who are offering services like emails or messages.

We are clearly talking about unencrypted content

in messages so we are looking into images, pictures, text,

We are talking about the so-called hashing technology

to identify already known pictures, images and videos.

But we are also talking about identifiers, artificial intelligence,

Technologies that do not limit their technology

to detect child sexual abuse are not allowed.

This legislation was created to allow the continuation

of voluntary activities of providers to detect

child sexual abuse material, so there is no obligation

We ensured during the negotiations that the text is aligned

with current data protection legislation,

so we added safeguards like better informing the user