Trusting that NCMEC can't be compromised is a nonstarter. I would trust a system where Chinese, Russian, American, British, etc police agreed that the database only includes CSAM.
This isn't going to unite international rivals against it any more than an asteroid hurtling toward the planet. Only the western world gives a shit about it, which means it's easily weaponized by anybody outside of it.
Rather than backdooring every device on the planet, a more practical solution would be to just take away kids' phones and chain them to the radiator. To protect the children from CSAM, lock them up.
We don't like to admit it but face the facts: children are property as far as the State is concerned. Same as any other asset, livestock and firearms, they can be "taken" away from you and "given" to others for dividends (which, when you think about it, describes the act of trafficking itself).
You don't protect your home by unlocking everyone else's. That sort of "solution" makes you an actual menace to society.
Absolutely. Just the first part, seriously. No need for chains and radiators. Let's ban kids under 16 from access to phones and the open Internet. It would MASSIVELY improve just about everything about childhood and mental health of the young.
There are plenty of technologies emerging with the density of memory and GPT type compression (that's what neural networks really do... compression) to facilitate "curated education in a box", and small network (family and friends) communication.
Honestly it'd make the internet a lot better for adults too.
The Louvre doesn't respond to people stealing paintings by disabling all the security cameras. Prisons don't protect the public by being free-range. Nuclear disarmament is too complex to go into here, but hypocrisy abounds. Barring that one incident, the Mint doesn't protect the money supply by storing it in the middle of a Walmart parking lot (predictably, it got stolen).
Every time we seek to secure anything, we make the coveted object more inaccessible to pursuers. That's how Protection works.
Anyone telling you lowering your guard and becoming vulnerable will somehow increase anyone's safety is one distraction away from slipping a roofie into your drink. It's the sort of gaslighting one expects from a pervert or voyeur.
It would make it very difficult to produce new CSAM if you eliminate the channels over which children are discreetly coerced into running away or producing it themselves.
Nonetheless I agree the utility that children get from access to the mainstream "Five Giant Enshitified Websites" doesn't really surmount the damage done. The main harm, in my opinion, is simply to general mental health and wellbeing. So that just adds to the case for an age restriction for smartphones. If that reduces potential contact with nonces then all-good, but the reality is that child abuse happens by people IRL, usually trusted family or neighbours.
Maybe the tide is turning and we're "getting there", and that's why I defended and supported many parts of the UK Online Safety Bill - even though other parts of it are trash. However this focus on CSAM to push unworkable restrictions is the usual dishonest politics and posturing.
We have more general problems with minors and the Internet, and most of them are "live rail" issues the media and politicians won't touch.
Is it that Baseline seems overly bureaucratic and will be ineffective, or that people should not support any CSAM lists at all?
Everything else is quite explicitly window dressing.
Does this meet your threshold?
The strict criteria ensure that the Baseline list refers only to images and videos which would be considered as illegal in any country.”
INTERPOL has a very large membership, including Russia and China. The baseline list is reviewed so only media that is illegal in every country INTERPOL operates in is included.
I’m not sure how a veto system as you’re suggesting would work practically, but this might be the closest thing.
I personally think Baseline is a good pragmatic approach. It includes only known media, where they retain the originals for sense checking, and only includes things judged to be CSAM by trained experts. It’s probably the lightest touch possible solution that is still somewhat effective.
CSAM doesn't need to be added to the database in real-time. It can be done quarterly, giving each national agency time to deliberate on the content.