The UK Is Poised to Force a Bad Law on the Internet
www.wired.com
WhatsApp and Signal have threatened to shut down services in Britain if the Online Safety Bill includes restrictions that undermine encryption. The government is pushing it through anyway.

I believe the “Online Safety Bill” should be renamed the “Online Exposure Bill,” and here’s why:

  1. Age verification likely involves estimating age based on biometric data – essentially, using an algorithm to scan a photo or video of the user." making our identity transparent in the digital world.

  2. “Client-side scanning, where a phone or other device would scan the content of a message before it’s encrypted and flag or block violating material.” This effectively renders E2EE (End-to-End Encryption) useless!

  • Th4tGuyII@kbin.social
    14·
    1 year ago

    Exactly. Online safety my arse.

    Putting a backdoor onto people’s phones to bypass encryption and forcing them to upload photos of themselves doesn’t do shit to keep them safe. If anything it endangers them!

    And for what exactly?? Do they not think that criminals will just find other ways to communicate, just like they always have? Are they that desperate to catch the stragglers left behind? This will literally only hurt the common folk just trying to get on with their lives, nobody else, just like every other mass surveillance law.