{"id":5983,"date":"2026-04-04T06:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/5983\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T06:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:24:15","slug":"tech-firms-enter-legal-limbo-over-child-abuse-scanning-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/5983\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech firms enter legal limbo over child abuse scanning \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The reactions to the political deadlock have been furious: European home affairs commissioner Magnus Brunner said it was \u201chard to understand,\u201d and child rights group the Internet Watch Foundation called it an \u201cabject political failure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lack of a legal fix, tech firms could very well continue to scan for child sexual abuse. <\/p>\n<p>Google, Meta, Microsoft and Snapchat&#8217;s parent company Snap said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/company-news\/inside-google\/around-the-globe\/google-europe\/reaffirming-commitment-to-child-safety\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">joint statement<\/a> late on Friday that they &#8220;will\u00a0continue to take voluntary action&#8221; to scan messages. &#8220;We call on EU institutions to conclude negotiations on a regulatory framework as a matter of urgency,&#8221; the tech companies said.<\/p>\n<p>One senior industry official involved in decisions on scanning, granted anonymity because they\u2019re not authorized to speak publicly, said their view is that, though the end of the law makes the legal picture murky, it does not make it unlawful to scan.<\/p>\n<p>Firms faced a similar gap in 2020, when they fell without a legal basis to scan for content. All companies scanning for CSAM, with the exception of Meta, said they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.missingkids.org\/blog\/2020\/we-are-in-danger-of-losing-the-global-battle-for-child-safety#techresponse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">did not stop scanning<\/a> at that time. <\/p>\n<p>A Microsoft lobbyist in February said the previous legal vacuum \u201cdid not stop Microsoft from continuing voluntary detection,&#8221; in an email to lawmakers seen by POLITICO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The reactions to the political deadlock have been furious: European home affairs commissioner Magnus Brunner said it was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3918,3223,5397,39,40,4305,3790,664,450,107,121,295,1920,18,834],"class_list":{"0":"post-5983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-big-tech","9":"tag-communications","10":"tag-encryption","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-law-enforcement","14":"tag-media","15":"tag-platforms","16":"tag-privacy","17":"tag-rights","18":"tag-security","19":"tag-social-media","20":"tag-software","21":"tag-surveillance","22":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}