Age checks and digital ID are being sold as safety and convenience. But when proving who you are becomes the price of using everyday digital tools, privacy stops being a right and starts becoming permission.
Will you accept digital life being gated by Identity checks, or push back now?
The UK is seeking to grant ministers wide-ranging new powers to rewrite significant portions of the Online Safety Act through amendments tucked into two unrelated bills.
The changes would allow ministers to amend the act by adding as much as a third to the regulatory regime using so-called Henry VIII clauses, limiting Parliament to a simple yes-or-no vote on an unforeseeable number of new rules, rather than full debate or amendment.
#OnlineSafetyAct #UKPolitics #AI
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uk-online-safety-act-ai-harms-government-labour-grok-elon-musk/
The same implication is given to this one, amendments to the #ChildrensWellbeingAndSchoolsBill, in which it says in a few places that the #SecretaryOfState can amend the #OnlineSafetyAct in any way to restrict "children's" ability to access the internet.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0383/amend/children_rm_ccla_0305.pdf
In other parts of this #Law, conveniently split by the end of a page, section 367 is worded in a way some have interpreted to allow the #SecretaryOfState to amend the #OnlineSafetyAct without ANY input from #Parliament, the people we supposedly elected to represent us.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0416/240416.pdf
The report of the Southport Inquiry (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-southport-inquiry-phase-1-report) makes for horrifying reading.
Perhaps of particular note to those interested in #OnlineSafetyAct issues, chapter 6 (online harms) of the report:
* leads with criticism of a lack of parental oversight / responsibility, which I found unusual.
* suggests that VPN usage in the UK should be subject to age / identity verification.
* notes that X was unhelpful in its responses to the Inquiry's statutory information requirements.
I'm a software engineer & 20yr Labour member: my open letter to the PM on our dangerous trajectory. Banning VPNs & mandating device scanning demolishes privacy for everyone:
https://www.jimmyff.co.uk/blog/open-letter-uk-digital-privacy/
cc: @openrightsgroup @eff
#DigitalPrivacy #Encryption #UKpolitics #OnlineSafetyAct
I'm a software engineer and 20-year Labour member, and this is an open letter to the PM warning that the UK is on a dangerous trajectory. I genuinely don't know if the Home Office grasps that banning VPNs, mandating device scanning , and requiring universal identity checks demolishes privacy for everyone -or if this is deliberate. This is my attempt to ask them to reconsider and start listening to the technical community.
I find it bizarre that the AgeVerification (AV) industry says âplatforms donât want AV because they donât want private dataâ â BUT civil society says âplatforms DO want AV because they want private dataâ
Itâs like those criticisms of the BBC where they receive conflicting hate from both sides, so you have to start wondering whether the platforms arenât simply doing the right thing to have pissed-off everybody.
Probably, yes, given the circumstances.
Compare
https://twitter.com/The_AVPA/status/2043608121768096227
Contrast
https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/2022428994596221081
#ageVerification #feed #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct
Itâs like those criticisms of the BBC where they receive conflicting hate from both sides, so you have to start wondering whether the platforms arenât simply doing the right thing to haâŚ
'UK looks to hold tech execs personally liable for intimate image abuse'
'A new government amendment, which is yet to be published but will be tabled to the Crime and Policing Bill and debated in the Commons next week, would mean senior executives who ignore media regulator Ofcom's enforcement decisions under the Online Safety Act face imprisonment and fines.'
Please share & sign this petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/762236
We have an opportunity to tell them NO to age verification for all user-user services!
The government is consulting on childrenâs use of social media and how age verification and age assurance technologies could help implement a potential age restriction on some platforms. We call on the Government not to require age assurance technologies on all user-user services.
Michael J Burgess
JuneSim63 đ
El Has
Neil Brown
jimmyff
alecm
Alec Muffett
Jon PENNYCOOK
Oelnbod