As parents and advocates of the Internet, we are passionate about the safety of children on the Internet, and we do everything in our power to keep them safe. Just like we buckle up our seatbelts and go to the doctor regularly, we keep an eye on what they do online and use tools like encryption to protect them from danger.
We’re so concerned about proposals like EARN IT, STOP CSAM, and the Children’s Internet Safety Act in the United States. These proposals erode our best tool for maintaining the privacy and security of our children’s information, such as where they live and go to school.
Allowing our children to have a life on the Internet is not always easy. Being a parent is finding the balance between vigilance and independence for our children. Luckily, there is a middle ground. We can take control of some strange things to reduce risks on the Internet. Using tools and actions, we can ensure our children are not exposed to inappropriate content or communicate with strangers. Encryption is essential since it gives our children a healthy and safe Internet presence without exposing their information.
How do these proposals endanger minors?
These proposals undermine encryption. They take away the possibility of using an essential tool to guarantee the safety of our sons and daughters on the Internet.
The EARN IT Act and the STOP CSAM Act would empower courts to consider encryption as proof of liability in cases of distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on a platform. While the EARN IT Law introduces criminal charges for platforms, the STOP CSAM Law introduces general civil liability for platforms and infrastructure providers. In both cases, the result is the weakening of the encryption.
The EARN IT and STOP CSAM laws would expose platforms to the risk of liability for distributing illegal traffic, despite not knowing its content. This would discourage companies from offering encryption or even allowing customers to use encrypted services.
The Children’s Internet Safety Act (KOSA) would also force platforms to choose between using end-to-end encryption or weakening it to filter content.
As parents, the endless potential consequences are scary. The irony is that many of us don’t realize how much we depend on encryption, as it works silently, avoiding the worst situations.
This is how encryption protects our sons and daughters
1. Encryption protects minors from grooming
Kevin is 12 years old and loves to draw. He is looking forward to sharing his art with the world. After discussing the pros and cons, his parents decide that he can create a profile on DrawHive, a social media platform for art lovers. They block comments and requests to prevent strangers from contacting Kevin, either through public comments or private messages. They also allow Kevin to use an encrypted peer-to-peer messaging app so he can chat with his friends.
His parents can block message requests from unknown users so that no stranger can hear or see his messages, not even the messaging app company. Thus, the information you share with your friends cannot be exploited by someone posing as a child to engage with you. For both of their accounts, they together choose a profile name that does not identify Kevin, his family, or where they live.
2. Encryption protects minors from exposure to harmful content
Shannon received her first smartphone on her 11th birthday. AT LAST. She is the last girl in her class to receive a phone and she is looking forward to chatting with her friends after school. As soon as she has it in her hands, she downloads a messaging app and joins chat groups, where she and her friends talk about their most annoying classes, her favorite songs, and how Adults are so embarrassing. They don’t know it, but her messaging app isn’t end-to-end encrypted.
Since she isn’t, she scans the messages for ads, which means Shannon gets increasingly weird pop-ups. Yesterday it was an ad for a dating app. Today, an announcement of an adult site. End-to-end encryption could have protected Shannon from being targeted for inappropriate advertising and content.
3. Encryption protects minors from CSAM
Toby and Sara are in elementary school and their father, John, doesn’t want to lose a single precious memory. He doesn’t have many childhood photos of him and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to his children. Before they were born, he bought himself a professional camera phone and even took photography classes.
According to her own accounts, she has taken thousands of photos and videos, and every day she backs them up to her account in the cloud, which she assumes is safe. Unfortunately, she is not encrypted and all the photos of her children (running in diapers, in the pool and taking their first baths) are now in the hands of a CSAM distribution network. With recent advances in artificial intelligence, it’s also easy to create fake offensive images of her faces. Using encrypted cloud storage could have protected her children’s personal photos.
When no bad things happen, there is no news. This is the encryption paradox. Since it is impossible to count “damage prevented,” we cannot encrypt the large number of children that encryption has protected. But we know that it does. Like the seatbelt we put on our children, encryption does just as good a job keeping us safe as we take it for granted.
Child exploitation of any kind is egregious, and it is reasonable for societies to want to find ways to address it. For this, they turn to the authorities. The lawmakers behind these bills say they want to protect children but are weakening the tools that do just that. Unfortunately, your proposals make us all endangered and rob us of the ability to protect our children.
