Disrupting violence while preserving encryption: A human rights approach

Eva Nave; Stephan Raaijmakers; Thijs Veugen

doi:10.26116/techreg.2024.012

Authors

Eva Nave Leiden University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5040-1601
Stephan Raaijmakers Leiden University Centre for Linguistics https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2984-6889
Thijs Veugen University of Twente https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9898-4698

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26116/techreg.2024.012

Keywords:

Incitement to violence, end-to-end encryption, human rights due diligence, disruption

Abstract

Business models adopted by online platforms have enabled the proliferation of online hate speech. Platforms providing end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) services have been under increased scrutiny for hosting hate mongers. Legislators struggle to conceptualise the responsibilities of E2EE services to not host hate speech without infringing the users’ rights to freedom of expression, association, privacy, or data protection. This interdisciplinary article proposes a new legal minimum standard expanding corporate human rights responsibilities of E2EE services to mitigate a category of criminal hate speech - incitement to violence. We explore the regulation and application of metadata, hashing, and homomorphic encryption to disrupt incitement to violence in large groups on E2EE services in compliance with human rights.

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Author Biographies

Eva Nave, Leiden University

Eva Nave is a Marie Curie PhD Fellow at the Leiden University Center for Law and Digital Technologies;
Stephan Raaijmakers, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Stephan Raaijmakers is Professor of Communicative Artificial Intelligence at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics and Senior Scientist at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO);
Thijs Veugen, University of Twente

Thijs Veugen is Professor of Applied Cryptography at the University of Twente Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science and Senior Scientist at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).