Like the “war on drugs” or the “war on terror”, a “war on child abuse” has too often been used to justify authoritarian overreach. Governments across the world are expanding surveillance, weakening encryption, and curtailing freedoms under the guise of staunching the proliferation of sexual images and videos of children – but these measures don’t actually solve the problem.

In Europe, the latest proposal for a “chat control” regulation put forward by the Danish presidency would require every internet-connected device to include government spyware, as easy to activate as Alexa or Siri. It would scan not only for known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) but also, in practice, would flag artwork, fan fiction, family photos and chats, relying on unreliable AI classifiers – which scientists warn can’t be implemented safely.

In the UK, Apple faced legal action earlier this year after refusing to build a secret government backdoor into its devices, while the secure chat app Signal has indicated it would rather exit from the UK than comply with the government’s demand to weaken encryption. Globally, laws like the UK’s

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