Because it isn't about CSAM, IMO. You see this with plenty of social issues, notably firearms ownership. The claim is we will restrict/license/outlaw xyz for the kids, but really, a data-drive approach would have focused on different things entirely (eg additional behavioral health services for kids, suicide prevention etc)

The same technology/access used for CSAM identification can find copyrighted files, materials that don't support current government, etc. Full E2E encryption seriously raises the cost of mass surveillance, and why the US government fights it at every turn going back 30 years.

CSAM is the perfect trojan horse to undermine privacy everywhere. No politician and no company can oppose it on the grounds of protecting privacy before having the reputation ruined.

Meanwhile the real pedos are rich people vacationing in well known places.

    > yet almost nothing seems to be done to prevent CSA

    > On the CSA side, ... [t]here doesn't seem to be any real push for educating and protecting kids before it happens.

This is a mighty wide brush you are painting with. When I was growing up, from very early (elementary school), we had "health class" where the teacher would teach you things about your body and health. This also included who is allowed to see you naked and/or touch your private parts. They also explained how to get help if someone what touching you inappropriately. That effort seems pretty active to me.

    > I personally know of 1 who took a leak across from a playground at 2am walking home from the bars and was put on the sex offender registry because it was within 500'.

Urinating in public late at night is an interesting category of inprobably CSA-labeled behaviour. It should be treated with kid gloves -- the context matters.

> There doesn't seem to be any real push for educating and protecting kids before it happens.

Before abstinence and birth control, CSA prevention should be the primary goal of sex ed in schools, especially before high school. (Though on birth control [1] and probably STIs as well the US is not doing well.)

[1] https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/sex-education...

In Sweden we're going to literally have Minority Report style pre-crime registries for potential child molesters. We already have one for potential domestic abusers. Fuck this country. I need to get out of here before it gets worse.

The CSAM issue is both very real and abused by politicians. When I did some work with a police agency, it was explained to me that there’s a pattern of escalation with people and they tend to accumulate collections and many escalate to actual behavior.

The detectives assigned to this work tend to not last long, and the horrific nature of the crime affects them.

Like all rape, it’s a combo of control and dopamine. The church and Boy Scout leaders leveraged their societial influence and power to compel compliance and even loyalty from their victims. Boy Scouts as an organization inserted itself into existing power structures like church, police and other institutions. It’s difficult for a 11 year old victim to make an accusation about a beloved community figure. They also tend to find ways to make their victims feel complicit. Even if people come forward, they are hard cases to try and exposes young victims to public shame. Many of these people plea to lesser crimes to protect the victim.

I wasn’t a victim thank god, but a Boy Scout leader at my parish was a serial molester who abused dozens or hundreds of children. I learned about it years later and realized that some of my friends were almost certainly victims — in his case everyone in authority just blew it off

I think it's similar with other liability issues, e.g., when a company happens to "lose" customer data through a breach. They will be on the hook for not having certain audits and certifications at regular intervals. Practically never will anyone be feeling any pain due to absolute disregard for basic common sense precautions to prevent issues in the first place. So usually, the pattern is that issues that can be outsourced to insurance will be handled by compliance departments - which don't care about the actual problems, just that the fallout from them is "managed" accordingly.

> On the CSA side, you rarely hear about arrests (they happen but less than CSAM).

Because it is nearly always someone we know. Someone who we just cannot imagine would ever do such a thing, even when the evidence is glaringly obvious. And I suspect that the fraction of the population diddling kids in real life is breathtaking, and nobody really wants to face that head on. Too uncomfortable.

I could just be overly cynical today. But given my own experiences and other people I've known throughout my life, I really believe it is very common.

>if that gets extended to

If you provide the government a platform to do So, they'll do Y if you wait long enough

One is far easier to prove. If the government could continuously monitor our actions "Is this CSA?" they might very well be pushing for that, too.

> ones who have been involved in abuse scandals in the past (Churches, Scouts, etc)

And those groups still have lower rates of abuse than Schools which do a lot less training and enforcement of youth protection policies.

Children are still safer in Scouts and churches than in schools.

Just about every kid goes to school though, so people just prefer to sweep that under the rug and focus on targeting organizations they are not a part of or disagree with because they're easier to demonize and make fun of.

I work with kids, and I've had to take the Scouts and Catholic Church's youth protection training. They are both free to take online if anyone wants to check it out.

The problem is, the things that would actually prevent CSA require things like "giving children rights", "widely mandating effective age-appropriate sex education even for young children", and "admitting that it's mostly not scary strangers doing it."

These are utterly anathema to huge chunks of society, especially American society. It's more and more clear, from the scope of the Epstein Files, just how much of American society and government has been influenced specifically to enable easy access to children by rich white men. Even beyond that, the entire right wing would instantly catch fire if we actually required effective sex education. Especially age-appropriate sex education going right down to kindergarten (yes, kindergarten: the better children that age understand what's normal and safe, the better they can communicate when someone is doing things to them that are not that...and I only stop at kindergarten because AFAIK that's the earliest mandated schooling still). Similarly, the right wing desperately wants to have absolute control over their children—treat them as property—so giving children rights that even parents have to respect will get them to oppose absolutely everything.

Plus, as other sibling comments have already noted, the real desire here is for ubiquitous surveillance. CSAM is just the excuse they use.