Every day he receives the Office for Minors (Ofmin), attached to the National Directorate of the Judicial Police 700 reports of juvenile criminal content exchanged online. That is 227,000 just for 2022, the year of its creation.
According to the Ecpat France network of associations, which fights against the sexual exploitation of children, the European Union hosts 62% of sexual violence content against children in the world. And France is the fifth European country to host the highest amount of child crime content.
To counter the proliferation of this illicit content involving children (+12,000% since 2013) and to be able to more effectively intercept minor criminals, the European Union, supported by associations, is thinking of legislating.
According to BFMTV.com and the media Euractiv.com, a working group met on Tuesday 4 June to develop a draft European regulation. Its goal: to more effectively identify juvenile criminal content exchanged over encrypted messages, but also against groomingi.e. the grooming of minors by pedophiles.
The risk of monitoring private conversations
Supported by associations such as Ecpat France, BeBrave and the Children’s Foundation, the proposed European regulation wants in particular that encrypted messages such as Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp are now obliged to scan photos and videos exchanged by users. While advocates of the project see it as an effective way to detect juvenile criminal content, some EU member states are concerned about the potential surveillance of private communications.
At present, the project plans to give users of these private messaging services the choice: completely deactivate the encryption of conversations or not be able to send, in case of refusal, any image, video or link.
As Mélanie Marié, advocacy officer of Ecpat France, explains to BFMTV.com, “Some countries, such as Germany, are against the inclusion of end-to-end encrypted messaging, even though it is widely used by child criminals. We await a clear position from France on this regulation. »
For the moment, France has positioned itself neither for nor against the project.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
