European Union Pushes Big Tech To Do More On Child Sex Abuse Material

A top European Union official has a message for Silicon Valley: we want you to do to more on the detection and removal of child sexual abuse material from the internet.

EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson is set to meet in person this week in San Francisco with senior executives from numerous tech companies to discuss the thorny problem of such material, also known as CSAM. Among the companies with which Johansson plans to meet are Meta, Google, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Snap, Discord, Twitch, Roblox, Dropbox and Pinterest.

Johansson, who spoke to Forbes by phone from her office in Brussels prior to her trip, will put forward new legislation that would make it mandatory for companies operating in the EU to detect and report CSAM.

She pointed out that currently, EU law allows companies to voluntarily detect and report CSAM material to law enforcement but does not require it. Some companies halted such voluntary reports in 2021 for fear of running afoul of EU privacy rules, but renewed them after clarifying regulations were enacted.

“I want everyone to detect and report,” Johansson said, noting that she would also seek the creation of an EU-wide center that would act as an analog agency for what currently exists in the United States, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC.

Under American law, companies must formally inform NCMEC as soon as they find CSAM on their networks.

Johansson specifically praised Meta, formerly known as Facebook, as doing an excellent job at detecting and reporting such material. In the United States, of the 21.7 million total tips that NCMEC received, Facebook submitted 20.3 million.

“[Tech firms] are already scanning for spam and malware and they need to do that for CSAM as well,” she said. “It is always illegal.”

Last month, Johansson spoke before the EU Internet Forum — a non-profit group with legislative, corporate and organizational members — and noted new arrivals Discord, TikTok, Twitch and Yubo.

“I would like to listen and have a dialogue but dialogue is not enough,” she said Tuesday. “We need dialogue and legislation.”