UK Passes Online Safety Bill Restricting Social Media Content
Emma Woollacott
Years in the making, the U.K's Online Safety Bill has passed its final
hurdles and is heading into law, to very mixed reactions.
The bill is designed to hold social media companies to account, but it
has spread in scope and ambition over the years.
To be enforced by regulator Ofcom, it requires companies—small as well
as large—to remove illegal content and prevent children from seeing
harmful material. However, it has gradually expanded to include further
offenses along the way, from cyberflashing to animal cruelty and online
fraud.
"Our common-sense approach will deliver a better future for British
people, by making sure that what is illegal offline is illegal online,"
says technology secretary Michelle Donelan. "It puts protecting children
first, enabling us to catch keyboard criminals and crack down on the
heinous crimes they seek to commit."
Companies that fail to comply could face fines of up to £18 million or
10% of their global annual revenue, whichever is greater—billions of
pounds, in the case of the largest platforms.
The bill has been opposed at every stage, and its final version won't do
much to allay concerns. Perhaps the starkest issue is encryption, with
the bill giving Ofcom the power to issue notices to force companies to
scan private messages for illegal material.
Earlier this month, the government appeared to row back a little on
this, with Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay making a statement.
"When deciding whether to issue a notice [to scan for CSAM] Ofcom will
work with the service to identify reasonable, technically feasible
solutions to address the child sexual exploitation and abuse risk
including drawing on evidence from a skilled person’s report," he said.
"If appropriate technology does not exist which meets these
requirements, Ofcom cannot require its use."
The bill has been welcomed by many, from Which?, a consumer group that
campaigned for the inclusion of scam ads, to charities such as the
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
"Tech companies can now seize the opportunity to embrace safety by
design," says NSPCC chief executive Sir Peter Wanless.
And the decision to weaken the requirement for tech firms to potentially
break encryption should stop the likes of Signal and WhatsApp from
disappearing from the UK any time soon.
However, some rights groups still aren't happy.
"While the UK government has admitted it’s not possible to safely scan
all of our private messages, it has granted Ofcom the powers to force
tech companies to do so in the future," says Open Rights Group campaigns
manager James Baker.
"These are powers more suited to an authoritarian regime, not a
democracy, and could harm journalists and whistleblowers, as well as
domestic violence survivors, parents and children who want to keep their
communications secure from online predators and stalkers," he adds.
Meanwhile, says Joe Mullin, senior policy analyst at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, "If the regulators claim their right to require the
creation of dangerous backdoors in encrypted services, we expect
encrypted messaging services to keep their promises and withdraw from
the UK, if that nation’s government compromises their ability to protect
other users."
The new requirement for scanning to be "technically feasible" allows
Ofcom to kick the can of end-to-end encryption down the road—quite
possibly, indefinitely.
But, says WhatsApp head Will Cathcart in a tweet, "The fact remains that
scanning everyone’s messages would destroy privacy as we know it. That
was as true last year as it is today. @WhatsApp will never break our
encryption and remains vigilant against threats to do so."
Forbes
===========================================================
The fb-exchange mailing list
Manage account,
List Page: https://www.freelists.org/list/fb-exchange
Archive: https://www.freelists.org/archive/fb-exchange
To unsubscribe: log onto the List page and select "Unsubscribe".
Administrative contact: insight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
===========================================================
