Students for Liberty Malta have expressed their legitimate concerns over the EU's 'Chat Control' proposal.
As it stands, the proposal envisages mass scanning of private communications, including encrypted conversations, raising serious issues of compliance with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by threatening to undermine the data security of citizens, businesses and institutions. A mandatory weakening of end-to-end encryption would create security gaps open to exploitation by cybercriminals, rival states and terrorist organisations, and would also harm the competitiveness of our digital economy.
At the same time, the proposed technical approach is based on automated content analysis tools, which produce high rates of false positives, creating the risk that innocent users could be wrongly incriminated, while the effectiveness of this approach in protecting children has not been proven.
In fact, a review conducted under the Danish Presidency examining the proposal for a regulation on combatting online child sexual abuse material, dubbed the 'Chat Control' or CSAM regulation, has raised new, grave concerns about the respect of fundamental rights in the EU.
Still, the European Parliament is bent on establishing effective rules to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse while protecting people's privacy.
The proliferation of online materials of children engaging or appearing to engage in a sexual act has been on the rise, particularly of materials depicting younger children. In 2023, there were over 36.2 million reports of suspected online child sexual abuse, marking a historic high.
As part of this commitment, the Commission aims to build on the existing rules from 2011. Provisional rules from 2021 currently allow digital companies to look for content being posted on their platforms for child sexual abuse material. The rules provide a temporary exemption from certain EU e-Privacy rules.
The proposal that Parliament is working on seeks to establish permanent rules about how companies can detect child sexual abuse material online, while a separate proposal for a directive put forward by the European Commission in 2024 addresses emerging threats linked to technological developments such as live-streaming and the use of artificial intelligence in creating child sexual abuse material.
MEPs' position on the regulation on combatting child sexual abuse clearly and unreservedly does not endorse widespread web scanning, blanket monitoring of private communications or the creation of backdoors in apps to weaken encryption.
Utterly shocking
It's enough that in the midst of an infrastructural health crisis, the medical personnel are literally working miracles daily within our hospitals and health centres.
But what perhaps is the last straw is the report that the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses are claiming that both patients and staff at Karen Grech Hospital are being subjected to dangerous and unacceptable conditions, with patients openly consuming alcohol and cannabis in wards.
Despite filing multiple incident reports and requesting security intervention, the nurses' appeals are being ignored by management.
When there is a lack of security in hospitals, it can lead to increased patient suffering, distress, fear, and anxiety. This can result from feeling physically and mentally vulnerable, and it can negatively impact a patient's recovery by increasing suffering and diminishing hope. A lack of security can also stem from systemic issues like staff shortages, inadequate security measures, or a breakdown in trust between patients and staff.
Individuals are admitted to the hospital with some predisposition to trust or mistrust the healthcare system and personnel. Patients encounter circumstances increasing their emotional and physical vulnerability to harm, leading to experiences of fear and anxiety. Without intervention, fear and anxiety lead to a decreased sense of security and increased distress and suffering for both medical staff and patients.
One of the most difficult challenges facing the healthcare industry is the labour shortage. While the healthcare industry is not unique in facing this problem, the implications can quickly become very serious in this space. Security teams are often short-staffed, on top of healthcare professionals like doctors and nurses running low on personnel. This can lead to more frustrated patients and families, on top of a barebones security team, a dicey combination.
There's a belief that verbal and other kinds of abuse are somehow an accepted occupational hazard in health care. But I believe this simply contributes to moral injury and burnout.
Children's self-harm: its pervasive consequences
Statistics show that the number of children attending emergency departments due to self-harm has nearly doubled from 36 cases in 2020 to 64 in 2024. This is most worrying, and more needs to be done to rein in this growing trend.
It risks becoming a social plague that will have pervasive repercussions.
Families are like systems of close relationships that develop, change, and affect one another. This means that the behaviours of one family member affect all the others, as do collective family practices and dynamics. These webs of interactions are complex and can give rise to both negative and positive effects.
While the effect of family dynamics on self-harming behaviours is relatively well-documented, less attention has been given to the impact of self-harm on families.
Self-harm is when someone deliberately harms themselves to try and cope with distressing experiences or emotions. This might be because they are seeking relief or distraction from overwhelming thoughts and feelings. It can also be a way to try to feel something in response to numbness and dissociation.
Most of the time, young people self-harm because of a complex combination of experiences. This means that families are rarely to blame or responsible for a young person's self-harm. But sometimes, family practices can contribute to or reinforce these behaviours.
Parents often experience various emotions in sequence or at the same time. It's normal for parents to feel fear, anxiety, anger, annoyance, frustration and disbelief about what is happening.
Partners may place almost all their focus on their child, putting their relationship and other aspects of their life on hold. Parents may take turns caring for their children, making it hard to have quality time together.
Parents may find it difficult to balance the needs of their child who is self-harming with the needs of their other children. Sometimes, siblings can feel frustrated at how much attention a young person receives.
Fortunately, family therapy can support families affected by self-harm in many different ways. Firstly, therapy can help parents and other family members understand how to best support a young person. This is not only important for a young person's recovery but also in relieving parents of stress, anxiety, and worries about what to do.
Family therapy can also identify and change unhelpful or harmful dynamics that may reinforce self-harming behaviours or make recovery more difficult. Parents may be unaware that certain dynamics are harmful or struggle to change them.
In family therapy, family members can learn new skills to facilitate positive change.