ROMA (ITALPRESS) – From tomorrow, April 3, digital service providers in the European Union will no longer be able to detect material related to online sexual abuse on children on their platforms. This is the alarm launched by 247 organisations working to promote the rights of minors and counter sexual abuse, including Save the Children Italia, following the failure to approve the second extension of a temporary derogation to ePrivacy rules, approved in 2021, which has so far allowed technological enterprises to voluntarily detect images and videos related to sexual abuse on minors online.
In the absence of stable legal bases, unfortunately still absent, the extension would allow platforms to continue detection activities (detection), fundamental to identify abuse materials and block circulation, and stop perpetuating abuse and trauma for minor victims. The signatories of the appeal strongly condemn the inability of EU political decision-makers to overcome the political stalemate and find an agreement to allow detection activities (detection), an attitude that has caused a serious gap in child protection, with consequences that risk being devastating.
The appeal – promoted by the European Child Sexual Abuse Legislation Advocacy Group (ECLAG) and signed by leading experts in child protection and child rights – invites EU policy makers to act urgently to adopt a solid and permanent legal framework that ensures the continuation of the detection of sexual abuse on children online. To counter the millions of images and videos of sexual abuse on minors who circulate online, large-scale detection is essential, so that platforms can quickly identify and report illegal content to police forces, starting investigations that allow victims to be identified and secured to justice.
The detection also allows companies to quickly remove illegal material and prevent further spread. In recent years 99% of the millions of reported images and videos come from platforms using these technologies. It is thanks to this commitment that every year thousands of victims are recognized and millions of abusive files are deleted from the network. If the ability to detect these contents was less, the number of reports would fall drastically, as happened in 2021, when, following the suspension of the legal framework that allowed detection and before the derogation was approved, the reports of material relating to sexual abuse on online minors decreased by 58%.
Such a drastic reduction would compromise the work of police forces, it would make it impossible to start and complete many investigations and leave children and girls trapped in situations of abuse or exposed to violent content. At the same time, illegal content would continue to circulate undisturbed, forcing victims to relive trauma whenever the material is displayed or shared.
“Every image, every video of abuse represents a child, a child, a teenager, exposed to a devastating violation of his dignity, his own security, his privacy. Behind those files there are wounds that continue to reopen. Child protection is not an option, nor a negotiable theme. It is a binding obligation, enshrined in European and international law, as well as an ethical imperative that does not admit derogations,” said Giorgia D’Errico, Director of Institutional Relations of Save the Children. “As we recalled in February in the audition before the EU Political Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which had then expressed positively on the extension in question, the abuse and sexual exploitation of minors could not exist online without the circulation of images and other pedopornographic content. For this reason, intercepting and blocking this material is an essential part of the contrast system. It is no longer time for hesitation, but to act, with responsibility, courage and urgency. We cannot allow institutional immobilism to continue to fall on the most vulnerable.”.
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
