The Lawfare Podcast: Europe Doubles Down on Client Side Scanning
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On May 11, the European Commission announced a new proposal designed to combat online child sexual abuse material. The proposal has drawn notable criticism from major member states, especially Germany, and has raised concerns about the national security risks it could create.
To talk through the issues at hand, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with two experts, each of whom wrote Lawfare articles about the EU’s proposal back in June: Robert Gorwa, postdoctoral research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center who specializes in platform governance and transnational digital policy issues, and Susan Landau, Bridge Professor of Cybersecurity and Policy in The Fletcher School and at the School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science at Tufts University. They discussed the European proposal in the context of child sexual abuse material, as well as within other contexts, such as that of terrorism. And they walked through the practical, legal, and technical implications of the draft regulation, as well as what its evolution reveals more broadly about policymaking in the digital sphere.