Towards online child protection in the EU

As tech companies continue to introduce end-to-end encryption onto their platforms for users’ privacy, it is critical that they also implement the necessary child safety tools and features.

Crucially, the EU public understands this. In a recent survey conducted by ECPAT International member organisations across the EU:

• Nearly 7 out of 10 adults felt that at present, there is little to no privacy online.
• There was an overarching concern for children’s safety online, with 73% of adults believing children cannot go online without being approached by adults looking to harm them.
• Encouragingly, 76% of adults indicated a willingness to compromise some of their own personal privacy online to allow for automated technology tools to scan and detect images of child sexual abuse and detect other forms of sexual exploitation of children.  

These are complex issues, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution that offers comprehensive privacy while ensuring the protection of children online.

Presently, the vast majority of us have already consented to targeted measures, such as malware and spam filters, that store our data in order to keep us and our devices safe online.

In a similar way, technologies built to detect child sexual abuse material constitute a highly targeted and specific measure that efficiently enables the evidence of child sexual abuse to be removed from the online environment.

This protects the dignity and privacy of survivors whose recorded abuse is circulating online, serves as an important deterrence measure for offenders, and ensures that online service providers are not facilitating the exchange of criminal content.

We need to ask ourselves: Do we consider measures such as spam and malware filters to be a violation of our privacy rights? Do we want child sexual abuse material to circulate online any more than we want to fall victim to malware or spam?

This is about real children and their right to live healthy, safe, and secure lives in digital and physical environments.

The European Commission’s proposal is, in no shape or form, the wholesale abandonment or violation of privacy rights.

It means protecting children so they can benefit from safe and empowering digital lives, in the same way that we provide countless safeguards for children in the physical environment.

As negotiation and debate around the proposal begin, we need to remember that this is not only about data, resources, or policies. This is about real children and their right to live healthy, safe, and secure lives in digital and physical environments.