"Australia’s eSafety commissioner waters down child abuse detection rules in online safety standards", 21 June 2024

The Australian online safety regulator has watered down new rules to force tech companies to detect child abuse and terror content on encrypted messaging and cloud storage services, after some of the biggest tech firms in the world warned it could lead to mass government surveillance.

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...Apple warned it would leave the communications of everyone who uses the services vulnerable to mass surveillance. The tech giant said it was concerned that “technical feasibility” would be limited to whether it was financially viable for companies to implement – not if it would break encryption.

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Encrypted messaging company Signal ... complained to the European Union over similar proposal....

The company’s president, Meredith Whittaker, told Guardian Australia no matter how regulators framed it, it was just another way of calling for mass scanning of private communications.

“We have been consistently trying to clarify the technical reality and the stakes of the proposals that are being put forward,” she said, adding that they “put lipstick on a mass surveillance proposal and say that it isn’t actually undermining privacy”.

“What we’re talking about is a kind of self-negating paradox. You cannot do mass surveillance privately, full stop.”

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