Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. The briefing document was very useful. The opt-in to this directive should, of course, proceed. Many aspects have been either clarified, updated or better defined. It also reinforces a victim's right to pursue avenues of compensation. This recasting of the directive tightens up many strands in the context of the detection, reporting and investigation of CSAM. Crucially, it endeavours to keep pace with advances in technology, particularly in the area of AI-generated materials, some of which are extraordinarily realistic, to such a degree they are making headlines, for example, the Met Gala deepfakes of well-known celebrity personalities. It is a clear illustration of how far somebody can take the production of digitally-engineered imagery. AI has a lot of significant benefits but also has threats. It is important that we stay ahead of those threats. We are addressing it in legislation but there are certain aspects I wish the Minister of State to address in his concluding remarks. I note a paragraph in the briefing document provided to us that outlined some statistical data from the US from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the body that receives reports of suspected CSAM from service providers. It stated that more than 10,000 cases were referred to An Garda Síochána in respect of material relating to Ireland. Gardaí were able to identify 115 victims of exploitation based on the reports. I must query the resourcing required for this. Of course, it is welcome that perpetrators and victims are being identified but what about those who are not identified because the Garda simply does not have the resources to get through those reports? Will the Minister of State comment on backlogs and how they are to be handled? The briefing indicates that reports are increasing year on year, unfortunately.

The CSAM directive has seen various iterations. An aspect that prevails is concern by civil liberty groups, some academics and the European Parliamentary Research Service. While all acknowledge the fundamental ambition is to protect children, the CSA regulation "... could become the basis for de facto generalized and indiscriminate scanning of the content of virtually all types of electronic communications" of all users in the EU and EEA.

On this point I briefly mention commentary from the ICCL, which queried An Garda Síochána on what it does with IP addresses and identifying information pertaining to NCMEC referrals after false positive content was identified. It confirmed that the following data relating to all referrals is retained, such as suspect emails, screen name and IP addresses. There may be no legal basis to retain data in the first place as it may not be proportionate to do so. Cases that are clearly not child abuse material are, for example, referrals involving images of children playing on a beach. Will the Minister of State clarify whether he, his Department or An Garda Síochána have sought and received legal advice on that matter? This directive is well intentioned, and I absolutely support it. However, there could be serious consequences for people caught up in a false positive report and we have to make sure that is dealt with in a way that reduced the risks to people in that context.

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