The proposed Regulation to fight online child sexual abuse: an appraisal of privacy, data protection and criminal justice issues

Protecting children online is a priority for the EU legislator. Since July 2021, an interim regulation allows service providers to derogate from confidentiality safeguards in the e-privacy Directive to fight child sexual abuse online. The European Commission aims to repeal this legislation with a proposal of May 2022. This Regulation will require providers to monitor users' content communication for online child sexual abuse, among other things. Privacy experts worry that confidentiality standards (i.e. end-to-end encryption) will be weakened and that the Regulation will serve as a basis for indiscriminate interception of content communications. However, the implications of the proposal go beyond privacy and data protection and will impact criminal justice rights too.