MEPs reiterate need for strong safeguards in detecting child abuse material online.

With the European Electronic Communications Code expected to enter into force (deadline for transposition into national law is 21 December 2020) which will extend the scope of the e-privacy directive to ‘over-the-top’ interpersonal communication services, the Civil Liberties Committee, want safeguards to ensure that tools used to detect and remove online child sexual material respect fundamental rights of people. Members of the European Parliament (MEP) while allowing this use of tools to remove child sexual material online, agreed that this material has to be processed using technologies that are the least intrusive to privacy and  technology should be used to only detect patterns and not to analyse the substance of the content. The MEPs emphasised that this legislation should not be interpreted as prohibiting or weakening end-to-end encryption.