Matthew GreenHere is my counterintuitive take on the UK online safety bill: although it’s a disaster for UK citizens, it may be good news for (non-UK) privacy advocates and those who want to see end-to-end encryption survive.
Here’s my justification for this: for years, the US, UK (plus sometimes Australia and India) have been threatening tech firms with all manner of legislation if they don’t *voluntarily* weaken their encryption features: most recently by adding content scanning.
Probably the best externally-visible example of that pressure campaign is this 2019 open letter to Facebook signed by US AG William Barr and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel. Along with some dude from Australia whose name I’ve already forgotten. https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1207081/download
These campaigns don’t explicitly threaten consequences, but with all pressure campaigns there are always (implicitly) consequences if tech firms don’t comply voluntarily. The biggest consequence is the threat of weird, ambiguous and badly-written legislation.
The problem, of course, is that in the US we have a First Amendment; our Congress is disfunctional at even passing basic laws to keep the country operating: also Americans don’t love weird speech laws. Some legislation was proposed, but it died. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/graham-cotton-blackburn-introduce-balanced-solution-to-bolster-national-security-end-use-of-warrant-proof-encryption-that-shields-criminal-activity
Graham, Cotton, Blackburn Introduce Balanced Solution to Bolster National Security, End Use of Warrant-Proof Encryption that Shields Criminal Activity | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and U.S. Senators...
Nobody gives a crap about Australia. I mean this in the kindest way.
So with US legislation off the table, fundamentally the big legislative threats here come from the UK, the EU and maybe India.
Thomas A. Fine 
@matthew_d_green The "cookie law" is already a disaster.