On 29 November, the Grand Committee adopted Parliament's position on the negotiations concerning the CSAM regulation proposal (preventing and combating child sexual abuse). The Grand Committee believes that Finland should not accept the compromise proposal of the EU presidency regarding the detection order. The Grand Committee received statements on the matter from the Constitutional Law Committee, the Administrative Committee, and the Transport and Communications Committee.
The Grand Committee believes that the compromise proposal of the presidency does not meet the conditions for an acceptable negotiation result as outlined in the Grand Committee's previous statement (press release 16 October 2023) and does not take into account the previous positions of the Constitutional Law Committee. The position decided by the Grand Committee is a politically binding guideline for the Government in the negotiations.
In its statement, the Grand Committee notes that the compromise proposal of the presidency contains numerous commendable measures and considers the proposal to be largely acceptable.
The problems with the proposal relate to the regulation concerning the detection order, which would require online service providers to identify and combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The solutions concerning the detection order are a central part of the regulation and the assessment of the acceptability of the compromise proposal.
The Grand Committee draws the Government's serious attention to the constitutional law considerations of the Constitutional Law Committee, which particularly relate to the right to the confidentiality of communications. The Grand Committee believes that the proposed model would, in practice, lead to mass surveillance of communications and circumvent the purpose of end-to-end encryption, as the surveillance would be carried out by enabling the technical detection of messages on the sender's device before the content of the message is encrypted.
The Grand Committee believes that the model involves a significant risk of misuse, and its implementation would weaken the security of communication and information systems and cybersecurity. The model would be technically challenging to implement reliably and could lead to the withdrawal of service providers offering secure communication services from the European market. Additionally, the model could cause numerous unfounded suspicions of distributing illegal material and would be easy to circumvent, for example, by altering the content of an image or video or encrypting the image or video content separately on the user's device. Therefore, the proposal's benefit for criminal investigation would be quite limited.
The Grand Committee draws attention to the potential conflict of the proposal with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. The Grand Committee questions whether prior consent for the detection of image and video messages in accordance with the service provider's terms can be a specific, genuinely voluntary, and unambiguous expression of will as required by the General Data Protection Regulation.
The Government should actively promote the proposal's objectives
The Grand Committee believes that the Government should actively promote legal regulation at the EU level to achieve the objectives of the proposal under consideration. The Grand Committee considers the prevention and combating of child abuse and sexual violence to be of paramount importance. The Committee believes that reliable and effective proportionate means should be found to prevent and combat the phenomenon. The means should be in line with the protection of the confidentiality of communications and other fundamental rights.
The Grand Committee considers it extremely important for children's rights that the objectives of the proposal can be implemented before the current EU-level regulation expires. The possibility for service providers to continue the voluntary detection and reporting of CSA material must be ensured.