Summary
The UK Parliament has passed the Online Safety Bill (OSB), claiming it will enhance online safety but actually leading to increased censorship and surveillance. The bill grants the government the authority to compel tech companies to scan all user data, including encrypted messages, to detect child abuse content, effectively creating a backdoor. This jeopardizes privacy and security for everyone. The bill also mandates the removal of content deemed inappropriate for children, potentially resulting in politicized censorship decisions. Age-verification systems may infringe on anonymity and free speech. The implications of how these powers will be used are a cause for concern, with the possibility that encrypted services may withdraw from the UK if their users’ security is compromised.
Well, I hope we get a list of businesses that comply so hopefully I can just uninstall those.
Can only hope most products choose to leave the UK rather than go with this.
The UK really is closed for business
The conservatives are pretty bad at the best of times but the last 5 or 6 years they’ve been utterly appalling.
This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy.
But how would they even enforce that? It’s E2E, and I doubt anyone would add backdoors to every app, website, and service that uses it.
They won’t need to. Signal, WhatsApp, Session and iMessage (Apple) have already said they’ll withdraw their products from the UK market. Meta are making similar noises regarding Facebook Messenger.
This is why I hesitate to store my data in a foreign country. The US has lots of problems but at least I get a vote here
help, i keep voting against the nsa but it still exists??
