What is Runbox’ take/stance on the EU Chat Control proposal?
How will you be affected if it becomes reality?
How will it affect your users?
Ref: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11 | European Pirate Party
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Hi,
Thank you for bringing this up – and apologies for the belated response.
Runbox takes a clear stand against the misuse of electronic services for the purposes of all types of crime as stated in section 7 of our Terms of Service.
Regarding the proposal for regulations to prevent and combat child sexual abuse put forward by the EU Parliament and the Council on May 11, 2022, the proposal is by no means decided and has a long way to go if we take a look at the EU’s legislative procedure. This will of course not prevent us from monitoring the legislative development of the proposal.
However, Runbox is a Norwegian company which adheres to Norwegian legislation. Norway is a member of the European Economic Area, and is obliged to integrate EU regulations * in Norwegian laws, but only after the members of EEA/EFTA-countries (Norway, Iceland og Liechtenstein) in the EEA Joint Committee * have decided to incorporate a new EU act into the EEA Agreement.
To the case in question, the Norwegian government states in a memo* published on September 28, 2022 that “The service providers covered by the proposed regulation have, under current Norwegian law, no obligation to uncover, report and remove abusive material online. An implementation of the regulation will require new authorizations in national law for such activities.” **
Further: “There is no national authority for receiving and reviewing risk assessments from service providers today, so this must be established or placed in an already existing institution. The same applies to an independent national authority.” **
If and when the proposal passes the legislative procedure in the EU, and is implemented in Norwegian law, Runbox is required to complete the mandatory risk assessment, according to Article 3 in the proposal. This, together with exactly how the proposal will be integrated into Norwegian legislation, will set the premises for further work, and so it is premature now to speculate about the potential consequences.
Until then it is not possible to say anything about how our customers might be affected, except that we will, as always, strive to protect our customers’ privacy.
*) The text is regrettably in Norwegian only.
**) Office translation from Norwegian.
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Thank you for this reply.