Chat Control 2.0 (CSAR): a risk list

CSAR is a proposed EU Regulation whose purpose is "to prevent and combat child sexual abuse" (procedure 2022/0155(COD))1. Most of the public opposition to CSAR boils down to "no surveillance" as a first principle, full stop. On the other side, there are at least some documented cases where the existing, voluntary Chat Control 1.0 has helped catch people committing crimes against children — which is usually where the counter-argument lands: "yes, but we will save the kids". Both of these are too short to be useful. Here are my notes, and a huge list of references for further investigation. There are two similarly named EU laws CSAR is not to be confused with the Child Sexual Abuse Directive — a separate EU law with an almost identical name, currently also under revision.2 The Directive is criminal law: it defines the offences and the penalties — what counts as child sexual abuse and how it is prosecuted. CSAR defines what online services must do about it: detection, reporting, and…