@p This is a good analysis, and I can confirm that there is indeed some coordination between the organizations and people you mentioned. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy, though. I know some of them well enough to conclude that it is a not a single organization, but a loose group. Some of them seem to be fake, but others seem to be sincere in their convictions.
I'd like to share a couple of additional links you may find interesting:
- https://about.iftas.org/yoel/
Remember this guy? Given the timing, I suspect that some of these projects were supposed to be sinecures for former Twitter employees.
- https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/pulls/140
This is a draft of a FEP about mandatory CSAM scanning. As one of the FEP repo maintainers, I immediately raised concerns about privacy, centralization, etc. That made me persona non grata at W3C.