Well, the thing I said was going to happen has already happened.

#OnlineSafetyAct #Privacy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo

Hack of age verification firm may have exposed 70,000 Discord users’ ID photos

#onlinesafetyact #wtf #wetoldyouso

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/09/hack-age-verification-firm-discord-users-id-photos

Well that didn’t take long. #onlineSafetyAct #ageVerification

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/09/hack-age-verification-firm-discord-users-id-photos?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

1996: “Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace” | David R. Johnson & David G. Post | …we’ve seen this comity problem coming for ~30+ years

By asserting a right to regulate whatever its citizens may access on the Net, these local authorities are laying the predicate for an argument that Singapore or Iraq or any other sovereign can regulate the activities of U.S. companies operating in Cyberspace from a location physically within the United States.

Full Quote:

First, the determined seeker of prohibited communications can simply reconfigure his connection so as to appear to reside in a location outside the particular locality, state, or country. Because the Net is engineered to work on the basis of “logical,” not geographical, locations, any attempt to defeat the independence of messages from physical locations would be as futile as an effort to tie an atom and a bit together. And, moreover, assertions of law-making authority over Net activities on the ground that those activities constitute “entry into” the physical jurisdiction can just as easily be made by any territorially-based authority. If Minnesota law applies to gambling operations conducted on the World Wide Web because such operations foreseeably affect Minnesota residents, so, too, must the law of any physical jurisdiction from which those operations can be accessed. By asserting a right to regulate whatever its citizens may access on the Net, these local authorities are laying the predicate for an argument that Singapore or Iraq or any other sovereign can regulate the activities of U.S. companies operating in Cyberspace from a location physically within the United States. All such Web-based activity, in this view, must be subject simultaneously to the laws of all territorial sovereigns.

There are some assumptions and structural metaphors to deeply criticise in this paper, but many of the key insights are bang on the money, even today.

#ageVerification #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveilance

Ofcom, the Government, the Online Safety Act and the Leather Shoes

Once upon a time, in a bright and busy kingdom, there was a kind young princess who loved her people very much. One summer, the roads grew hot and rough, and everyone’s feet were getting scratched and sore. The princess worried, “How can my people walk and play if the ground hurts them?”

So she called her helpers and said, “Let us cover the whole kingdom with soft leather, so no one’s feet will ever be hurt again!”

Her helpers worked and worked, but soon the princess saw that there was not enough leather in all the land to cover every road and hill. The cows and goats would have no skins left, and still the earth stretched on forever. The princess sat on the palace steps, puzzled and sad. “I only wanted to help,” she sighed. “Must people always walk in pain?”

Just then, an old craftswoman came forward with a gentle smile. She held up two small pieces of leather and said, “Your Highness, instead of covering the whole earth, why not cover just the feet?” The princess watched as the woman tied the pieces under her own feet, making the first pair of shoes. The princess laughed with delight. “Of course! If we change a little for ourselves, the whole world can feel different!” And from that day on, everyone in the kingdom walked happily—because the princess had learned that sometimes, the smallest change is the wisest one.

Perhaps blanketing the entire internet and all of its websites with identity and age verification was not the best approach, Princess Ofcom?

#ageVerification #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance

Oh, look, the entirely predictable consequences of age verification that everyone said would happen. Bravo for all involved with the #OnlineSafetyAct.

https://www.theverge.com/news/797051/discord-government-ids-leaked-data-breach

Before we can even breathe a sigh of relief that the E.U. has stopped (or at least paused) its repressive authoritarian push for chat control, U.K. is already renewing it's push for Apple to backdoor it's products

https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/01/the-british-government-is-still-insisting-apple-has-to-create-a-backdoor-into-icloud

#ChatControl #ukpol #apple #OSA #OnlineSafetyAct #privacy #icloud #encryption