App Designed to Protect Children Online Gets £1.8M EU Funding
The Facts
The development of a new app intended to work in real-time — using artificial intelligence to identify potential child sexual abuse material online and stop users from seeing it — has received £1.8M ($2.16M) of funding from the EU.
The European Commission-funded Project Protech, which will launch in March to create the app named "Salus," is led by a university hospital in Berlin, with the support of the UK tech company SafeToNet.
The Spin
Narrative A
Put together with criminal investigations and the removal of the imagery, the Salus app is likely to become a key tool for the long-term prevention of child sexual abuse content. It will provide a technical barrier for those willing to avoid starting or continuing consumption. In addition, this safety tech will decrease the workload of law enforcement pursuing criminals.
Narrative B
The EU is heading down a dangerous path as its efforts to quell child sexual abuse material may create a mass surveillance regime across the bloc. While this voluntarily-deployed app is well-intentioned, it would be prone to error as available technology is nowhere near enough to be reliable. Instead of focusing on the online world, the EU should be pushing for more accountability, transparency, and strong independent organizations that rebalance power to prevent abuse and provide justice for victims.
