According to the latest draft text of the controversial EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation proposal leaked by the French news organisation Contexte, EU interior ministers want to exempt professional accounts of staff of intelligence agencies, police and military from the envisaged scanning of chats and messages (Article 1 (2a)). The regulation should also not apply to ‘confidential information’ such as professional secrets (Article 1 (2b)). The EU governments reject the idea that the new EU Child Protection Centre should support them in the prevention of child sexual abuse and develop best practices for prevention initiatives (Article 43(8)), writes Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer.
The law must apply to all, including public servants. As they are beholden to the public, they are subject to review and FOIA requests are automatically granted for the content.
Remember the rule of authoritarians: if someone wants to stop you from being suspicious, they want to stop you from doing the same things they’ve done.
Now I’m suddenly not so against this law. Journalists paradise. They’ll have a field day!
It would just result in them having official and unofficial devices, where all the things they don’t want linked to their person, political party or public knowledge is on a different device that isn’t going to get caught in the FOIA requests.