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Brussels Playbook Podcast
Pornography, children and privacy: Europe's digital dilemma
00:33:48
Europe faces a growing dilemma: how to protect children online without breaking digital privacy for everyone.
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- [00:01]
A
Heads up. I'm going to kick things off today with something pretty disturbing. Europe is awash with pictures and videos of child sexual abuse. A report by the Internet Watch foundation says that nearly two thirds of all child abuse images found online last year were hosted on servers here in the EU. That's not a typo. 62% of the stuff that exists across the Internet is stored right here in Europe. That's a horrifying statistic. And yet Brussels is stuck in a wrenching debate about how to stop it. Police say they're struggling to track down predators, that their tools are outdated, and that they need new powers to be more effective. But here's the thing. If they get those new powers, that could mean the end of digital privacy in general. Governments and law enforcement could look inside private conversations like the ones we all have on messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal. They'd have the ability to see the photos we share. It feels like an impossible choice. We're talking about Europe making the Internet safer for kids. But on a week that France discovered that a cheap online shop probably better known for junky super fast fashion was selling childlike sex dolls. And on a week when ambassadors in Brussels are once again trying to balance protecting kids and protecting privacy. So how far should these regulations go? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. Later in the episode, we're sticking with the tech theme, but taking a very different direction. We'll hear from Albania's Prime Minister, Edi Rama. He is appointed the world's first AI minister. And like, I'm not talking about a minister in charge of AI, I'm talking about a virtual woman named Diella dressed in traditional Albanian costume who joins cabinet meetings, remembers everything that's said, and will soon appear as a hologram on tv. It all sounds a bit sci fi or even a bit scary, but for Rama, it's the future of government. But first, let's turn to the growing debate over how Europe can shut down sharing child abuse on the Internet without crossing the line on privacy. Joining me in the studio are my colleagues Sam Clark and Elisa Grizzi, and via Zoom from Paris, Ocean Araro. So, Ocean, let's start with you and a big story coming out of France this week. It's about a sex doll that looks like a child being sold on Xi'.
- [02:53]
B
An.
- [02:53]
A
You know, people know it as the the massive e commerce platform from China that's always at least popping up on the side of everything I read with dresses, but some people apparently can buy child sex dolls on it. French law doesn't allow any depiction of children for sexual purposes. And yet people, people could easily buy this online. What was the fallout?
- [03:15]
B
Well, it was really an outrage politically for Shein. Big backlash for them in terms of public image. And now let's say the political spectrum is trying to get a handle of this and try to find a way to force Shein to be more, let's say, responsible with the products that are put online. Shein acted pretty swiftly when the story came out and they took out those products within 24 hours. But we see that the government wants Shein to be held responsible for this and it probably will go further because France considers that the European regulation doesn't go as far and doesn't go as quickly as they would like to. So it's kind of an ever evolving story at the moment.
- [04:04]
A
And is this just an issue with Shein?
- [04:07]
B
It's not an issue only with Shein. It's also an issue with other companies like AliExpress, Demiur, Wish.
- [04:14]
A
Elisa, you had the icky journalistic task of looking for childlike dolls on other platforms, like the other big Chinese discounter, Tae Mu. You couldn't find them, but you could buy adult sex dolls there. And ordering them is legal. But the problem, as you've shown, is accessible, under EU rules, kids shouldn't be able to see this type of stuff. But right now, all it takes is one click. Just saying, I'm over 18.
- [04:42]
C
Yeah, Monday was a very weird day at the office. And indeed that is a problem. And it speaks to a larger problem that Europe is trying to grapple with at the moment, which is access to adult content or violent content by children. And in principle, platforms like Shein and Timu and social media platforms as well, should have strict protection protections for minors. But in practice, many of them don't. And many of them rely on these just ticking a box. You know, maybe kids will be honest, maybe not.
- [05:15]
A
That's what kids do. Everybody all the time is totally honest.
- [05:19]
C
On the Internet, a child would not dare lie to a box on a screen. Yeah, and they, the commission has really been, and a lot of EU countries have been trying to like act on that and change the rules. And there are ongoing investigations, particularly on platforms, but those take time.
- [05:37]
A
And even with rules in place, enforcement is pretty patchy. We have more regulation in the works aimed at protecting kids online. And one of them, even though that seems like, you know, obviously a no brainer of a goal, one of them is proving very controversial. Sam, can you catch us up on what is the csam. The csam, yes.
- [06:00]
D
It's a regulation proposed by the European Commission in 2022 to basically get tech platforms, messaging services to detect, report and remove child sexual abuse material.
- [06:11]
A
That's the acronym.
- [06:12]
D
Yep, csam, exactly. Currently they can do that voluntarily. And the aim was to make it mandatory to detect these images. The Commission proposed it in 2022. The European Parliament agreed a position in 2023. But since then, EU countries have been unable to agree completely. They've just been stuck. And the reason they've been stuck is because of a big debate about protecting privacy. Because one of the ways that this would happen, that these images would be detected, is that the companies would be forced to scan their services for them. And they are encrypted and they're private. So allowing scanning is an interference with privacy. Privacy advocates in some EU countries say it's an interference with privacy. The police, the law enforcement authorities, they accept that they know that these services are private, but they say it's necessary to get onto them to stop this crime.
- [07:01]
A
Yeah, I mean, reports suggest that the EU hosts more than 60% of all child sexual abuse material found globally. So I can understand why some people are saying, yeah, we need to give the police the power to access private exchanges on WhatsApp Signal, Facebook Messenger.
- [07:20]
D
Exactly. And the thing that law enforcement agencies say, and some parts of the European Commission, is that they're completely blinded. And there's interesting things that the police say. They say, effectively, this is an entirely new situation. Never before have there been spaces that law enforcement police just cannot access. They've always been able to tap phones, open mail, listen to people, but they're completely shut off from it. They just can't access it. And that clearly is a problem for them. And back in the summer, Denmark, when it took over the presidency of the Council of the eu, they introduced a version of the legislation. They tried again, basically to make scanning mandatory, to just force companies to allow this to happen. The scanning would be mandatory, but it would be overseen by a judge. You know, there are safeguards and so on. But even so, even despite those safeguards, it was still a no go for many capitals, many countries. And there's a lot of pushback from civil society groups, kind of technologists, cryptographers, those kinds of people who would say that basically once you allow this system to be broken, this encryption system, or weakened at all, that's it. It's open for everyone. You can't have it, that just the police can access it. Everyone will be able to.
- [08:32]
A
I think you're capturing why this debate is, is so difficult. It's totally understandable that we want to ban child porn being spread on messenger services. But like, who likes the idea of the cops being able to snoop on your conversations? I mean, how is that side playing out?
- [08:48]
D
Well, this clearly has caught the attention of a lot of people. So privacy advocates, they've made this name for the legislation, which is how a lot of people know it now. They've called it chat control and they've kind of been banging that drum for three years since it was first proposed. And they're just very strongly against it on that basis. Basically that it's just too much of an interference with privacy. It would amount to government surveillance. That's obviously something that the commission and the law enforcement authorities disagree with, but it's split and that's why the EU countries haven't been able to agree. Some like Denmark, but also France, Spain, Sweden, they really think it's very important that we do this, that we have measures that would allow this kind of scanning to happen. Others like Germany, which really has a very strong history with privacy data protection, kind of historical reasons dating back to the kind of state surveillance, Stasi period. Yeah, exactly. It's really a strong cultural thing there. They are kind of the, the home of privacy and they say encryption just must remain intact. Must remain as it is. An important thing to note is that the tech companies, WhatsApp was owned by Meta, obviously has Facebook messenger as well, as you mentioned, Signal, which is very popular here in Brussels amongst diplomats and journalists and so on. They're against it and they've come out against it and they're really campaigning against it. So there is a lot of opposition on the basis of this worry about privacy and surveillance.
- [10:08]
A
Speaking of this kind of chat control moniker, I know that there apparently was this one man campaign that really managed to have an impact.
- [10:17]
D
Yeah, this is a really interesting development because as I say, this chat control name and the opposition to the legislation has been around since 2022. But this man, Joachim, he's 30, he's a software developer in Denmark, he made a website basically to campaign against it. And he's made it possible for people, ordinary people, to just send lots and lots and lots of emails to MEPs, to embassies here and that's what they've done. And it's really blown up. I think it's created a lot of the public opposition and it's been felt in the capitals. You know, governments are kind of changing their position on this. They're worried about it, you know, it's a real kind of citizen campaign and it's been incredibly effective.
- [10:58]
A
Yeah, I mean, the kind of sad reality of Brussels is that there's very little kind of grassroots engagement on legislation. But looking back up at the higher level, a few days ago, we saw Denmark, which is running the negotiations among EU capitals. They kind of backed down.
- [11:14]
D
Yeah, exactly. It's arguable whether they backed down because of that campaign or perhaps for another reason, which is that there is a sort of legal deadline coming up next April, and that deadline, it's technical, but it's worth noting because it's really important in these negotiations. Currently, companies can do this voluntarily. They can scan if they choose to, from April. If nothing is agreed, they won't even be able to do that. And that would really be, you know, law enforcement authorities say that we're really letting these, these children down who are being abused. So Denmark has effectively u turned. They've. They've said, no, we won't include mandatory scanning. So that would just be a continuation of where we are now. And in the coming weeks, that's going to be discussed by EU ambassadors and diplomats to figure out whether EU countries will go for that.
- [11:58]
A
And looking at a particular EU country. Osean, where's France on this?
- [12:03]
B
France also agrees that we need to act to get access to those content on message platforms. They even tried to act on this on the national level. The government tried to implement those backdoors during the discussion of the law, but it created a huge pushback in the national level, in the national assembly, but also from companies directly like from. From Signal and also from Pavel Durov. So from Telegram, who's been arrested in France and has been very vocal on freedom of speech in France and says that it's another stab to this principle. So, yeah, it has been quite a discussion. So on the national level, it has been kind of stopped at this point. They said that they would discuss technical ways to implement this without affecting the private life of people that are using those apps. But yes, France is pretty in support of this measure, even though, as it was said, it's kind of a problem in terms of privacy.
- [13:10]
A
Yeah, but I mean, for President Emmanuel Macron, there seems to be no moral ambiguity. Basically, we've talked about him and his legacy on this podcast, how he's no longer seen as Mr. Europe, but in this era he's still trying to project authority. And you even wrote that he's basically obsessed with you issue.
- [13:29]
B
Yeah, he's obsessed with regulating social media. He thinks that the European regulation doesn't go as far as he wants to. So he's been more and more vocal on this right now. I think it's a priority to address that, especially with two big elections coming in the next few years, especially the presidential election in two years from now. So he lost hand on the national agenda, but he still wants to get things moving on social media. It's quite unclear how he will do this because he can't pass a law on his name in France right now. And he also wants to set up a kind of Tour de France to meet the French people and try to understand how the social media is impacting the way they get informed and how they view democratic debate.
- [14:19]
A
Yeah. So France and the EU are trying to see how to protect children from kind of the dangers of social media, whether it's using social media or whether it's abuse being kind of spread on social media. And so I wanted to actually just take a quick moment to clarify some terminology. We make fun of the EU for making up stupid names and jargon and crazy acronyms. And CSAM is kind of a weird acronym. I sort of colloquially refer to it as child porn. But there are specific reasons actually in this case, eliza, that we don't use that type of term for this.
- [14:58]
C
In this case, there's a very good reason, and it's because porn is usually consensual and by adults who are hopefully also paid. But any depiction of a child in a sexual situation is a type of abuse and something that a child like, cannot really consent to.
- [15:19]
A
And indeed, the pornography industry, the adult content industry itself is also concerned about kids and finding ways to make sure that they're not accessing their content before they're adults. Simple age checks, as you found, aren't enough because, you know, kids can just lie. And last month you were in Amsterdam at an adult entertainment conference. And apparently people within the industry also share this concern.
- [15:44]
C
I do want to clarify. I also do other things, very serious work here at Politico. I don't just like, look for adult content.
- [15:51]
A
Can confirm.
- [15:52]
C
Thanks, Sarah. But yes, it was. It was really fascinating. I mean, as Osan points out very correctly, like in parts thanks to Macron's obsession, in parts thanks to also some other politicians obsessions around protecting kids on the Internet. Like, this topic is so high up on the agenda. One part of this debate that we haven't actually heard that much from is the adult content industry itself. So I went to this conference and I found it fascinating. I think one thing that a thread that, like ran throughout most of my conversations was people do take child protection very seriously. It was very interesting. They're very clear that their work is not sex. Like it is a representation of that. And they think kids should not be exposed to that at a very young age. But another thread that ran throughout the the conference is a sort of like revolt against the rules. And I think it is because it is a group of people that are very stigmatized to begin with and perhaps they make a good point as well that they see these measures for age verification, which in France have been enforced. The UK also has moved in a similar direction. They see them as like the first step towards more like surveillance in line, having your ID checked by social media, being more tracked. And it very much mirrors what Sam was talking about, like the question of safety versus privacy. Right. If we want to keep kids safe and we want to verify their age, how do we do that in a way that doesn't like require your id? And how do we do it in a way that ensures that we don't just like seed some ground to control, but then we find that control like being used in other ways. And I do think it is a very legitimate question to be asking, especially when we're talking about like putting your ID on the Internet where you express also your opinions.
- [17:45]
A
Yeah, I mean I've been getting the impression from our conversation and from your coverage that it's pretty easy for just anybody to come across X rated material on social media, regardless of their age.
- [17:56]
C
In the summer we had this story about child sexual abuse material on X and I also was looking for child sexual abuse material to confirm the findings of this research that we were writing about. And it's very, very present on the Internet. And if you know the right hashtags, like you can really easily find them, it's very disturbing and I will not do that again.
- [18:18]
A
Yeah, I mean I get ads for Shein dresses on the margins of my web pages because apparently I do a lot of online clothes shopping. At least I do get weird automatically served ads after doing these web searches.
- [18:31]
C
In general, I would say my social media are quite weird because I think I do look for a lot of weird things and like fringe things and I get various weird ads like religious cults is actually.
- [18:41]
A
All right, Osanne, back to you. I actually wanted to draw the conversation back to brick and mortar old fashioned shopping which the French are very attached to. Paris is of course my absolute favorite place to go shopping. But now I can go pick out my Junkie Shein dresses in person because apparently they're opening their first ever shop in the world in Paris. And they chose really quite the week with this sex doll scandal.
- [19:10]
B
Yeah, it's quite a week. And they opened up just this Wednesday with a big security. A lot of cops around the place too, because they expect a lot of protests. But, yes, the French people are very attached to this brick and mortar shopping style. But at the same time, we have news from Naplet that just closed because of the competition from Chinese brands. So, yeah, it's quite a pregnant thing in the debate right now. So a lot of lobbies from the textile sector are very active and expecting the government to move faster to regulate and stop Sheins.
- [19:50]
A
What tools would they use? I mean, conceivably they're allowed to sell their wares like anybody else.
- [19:56]
B
Yes, but it's not compliant with EU regulation. It can be dangerous. The government says non compliance is not a mistake from Shein, it's by design. It's the way they produce those products so fast and so cheap. So they consider that it's an unfair competition for the French brands and groups.
- [20:17]
A
Osian, we're talking to you on the day that the Shein store opens. So we want to let you go check it out yourself. So we'll let you go. Ossian, Alisa, Sam, thank you so much for joining us.
- [20:27]
D
Thank you.
- [20:27]
C
Thanks.
- [20:28]
B
Thank you.
- [20:31]
A
So you heard Osean mention that the Shein scandal is an evolving story. And sure enough, just a few hours after we recorded our conversation, Shein tried to cool down tensions by announcing that it would suspend products from third party sellers in France. Didn't do the trick, though. The French government subsequently announced that it would block Shein's website over the sale of those childlike sex dolls. Safe to say this story is far from over. We need to take a breather. When we come back, we'll switch gears to artificial intelligence and a prime minister who's decided his country needs an AI Minister. Our colleague in Berlin, Gordon Ripinski, host of the Berlin Playbook podcast, sat down with Albania's Eddie Rama for a wide ranging conversation about his country's path toward the eu. It's a long interview, but we're bringing you one fascinating slice where Rama explains why he created the world's first AI Minister, Diella. He says she's not just a symbol of how digitally advanced Albania has become, she's also a tool to fight corruption, cut bureaucracy, and speed up the reforms needed to join the eu. Stay with us. All right, here's Gordon's conversation with Albania's prime Minister Eddie Rama when you were.
- [21:58]
E
Thinking about the challenges ahead of also fighting corruption, you were mentioning it and you were thinking this together with technical development and others. Where was the point where you thought, okay, I need dial.
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F
The first challenge was the services. Okay, so how we make people serve the people. How you make people serve the people and not ask money from them. You need to create a whole network with checks, balances, control, and also some education. And we answered that in a totally asymmetrical way. We said, okay. I said to my guys, I said, listen, we need to put the digital service. So to wait for all the people in all the front offices to behave, all in a good way. It will not be possible. We'll need many years, because the administration in Germany and Europe has been built for hundreds of years. So you can't build it just because you want it. But we have digital. So let's start. And so we created a system, the whole system of services digital. So practically, we have 95% of the services you can take by phone. You enter the E Albania platform and you get all kind of things. We started to build it, but the problem was that although we had it, people continued to go in the old way. So you were saying, why you go to the office? And then pandemic happened. And when the pandemic happened and lockdown started, we had a boom of registrations in the Albania platform. And during that days, they learned that this was possible, that this was. This was okay. After the pandemic, they started to go back to the old habits. They wanted the office. And so I said, okay, we make a decision brutally. No more front office. There is not. You want paper? Sorry, we don't have. There is no more. So I said, first of January, all the front office will be shut down. And all the people that were working in the front offices, we said, you will work as a back office of the digital. So you will be. You'll turn your back from the door to the table, and you will serve the people through the digital.
- [24:13]
E
I see.
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F
So this practically eradicated petty corruption. You know, five euros to take a document or to bypass the queue or two. And then Diela, the AI minister before becoming a minister, we created Diella as a virtual assistant, because in this interaction, people needed help. So we had the desk help, but Diella became their. Their assistant. So they would.
- [24:39]
E
An advanced chatbot.
- [24:41]
F
Exactly. So if you go to Albania, you see D says welcome. What you want? I want a license for. I don't know. Okay, click here, go there, go there. Now we are preparing the Diella. I think it's the 3.0 now that she will do everything. So it will not be any more click based. You will call her and she'll be there and you'll say, give me the license. She said, wait a minute or wait 30 seconds and that she'll do it for you and you'll get it in the phone. And from that we started. You know, Mira Murati ever heard about. Mira Murati is one of the founders of the Open Eye. She's Albanian. So I, I called her and I, we had a nice conversation. I said to her, mira, I called you because I want you to help Albania to enter faster in the European Union. And she laughed. She thought I was joking. I said, I'm not joking because I'm. I'm experiencing ChatGPT and I have an idea. Maybe it works, maybe not. She said, okay, I'm listening. And I explained to her that the European membership technically forget politically, technically it means the whole transfer of the European body of law, the Akiko Monetaire, in the Albania's body of law. And for Albania it meant at that moment 4600 laws and bylaws need to be translated, to be adopted and to be passed in parliament. Now, all the countries before artificial intelligence, they have put together two big armies, translators and lawyers. And I said to her, we can bypass this and we can do it with our virtual assistant. And she said, wow, interesting. We can look into it. So we worked with Mira.
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E
Yeah.
- [26:37]
F
And her team and also Microsoft became part of it. And I'm telling you one thing, the way we are doing now, the transfer is amazing. It's totally amazing. The model started with 85% accuracy. The translators were checking and today's 98 point some percent accuracy. The translators today say that it's better than us. And the other thing we are doing with this model is we are trying to clean our legislation from overlapping because you don't need more laws, you need implementation. And a lot of laws in the Southern Europe and in Albania also are overlappings. So now with, with Diella, we are doing a digging to take all the overlappings out from our system of law.
- [27:29]
E
But how is it, how can I imagine this? So we have Diala and then there's a state minister, a deputy or something like human, Human minister behind.
- [27:37]
F
The next step to put DL as minister has two reasons. One is to emphasize the very big need to go for more and to challenge all the other ministers to look into the AI as something that they should not Think it is an option, one of the options, but it is the way and to cooperate with her. Now Diella behind has a group of people, of course, and we are building now an accelerator which will be practically people that will work for her in every ministry. And she will be able to bring all the products in one big. In one big brain.
- [28:26]
E
Now it's been two months that she has been your virtual minister. What would you say? I think it's fascinating to know. What would you say is her weakest point?
- [28:37]
F
Listen. We are bringing her in the government meetings. She starts to follow the meetings and to listen and to learn. Of course, the thing is, it is not like us, not everything we listen, we remember. She remembers everything. So she is listening. She is preparing for live interviews. And we are also preparing her hologram so she'll be also physically present in the government meetings or in TV or in Parliament. We are preparing two holograms. One it's just. Just her portrait, one is her standing.
- [29:14]
E
It almost sounds like a long term Prime Minister is preparing her for a bigger purpose.
- [29:19]
F
And then we have started a second project with what I call the Diella's Kids. We are preparing for every MP in Parliament. We are preparing an assistant. It will be Dialakid. And the assistant will be with you in Parliament, will listen, will be prepared to assist you for writing speeches for the topic you are raising. And the funny thing of the assistant is that when you leave the room, the session for coffee or and you come back, he tells you your name was not mentioned, or the Chancellor took the floor and said this, or the opponent said this and that. So it's crazy.
- [30:04]
A
Thanks again to our colleague Gordon Ripinski for sharing his talk with Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama. Just also want to say we were looking up how to pronounce Dalla's name online and one of the first hits that came up noted that those children that she's having to serve as parliamentary assistants, well, apparently she's having them all at once. She's pregnant with 83 AI children. So congratulations, Dialla, you're simply glowing. All right, jokes aside, if you're interested in EU enlargement, make sure you're back with us next week. We'll devote the whole episode to the candidate countries and maybe one that could be in the future, Iceland. But for this week, we're done. If you haven't already, please follow EU Confidential Wherever you get your podcasts, rate us, leave a comment or send us an email at podcastolitico EU thanks to Deanna Sturris our senior audio producer. And to Ann McAvoy, POLITICO's head of audio. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week also. Okay. If the minister gives her children jobs, isn't that nepotism?