The Online Safety Bill is a UK law that has passed through the House of Commons and is currently at committee stage in the House of Lords. It is likely that it will become law, and its reach extends to any internet platform providing services to people in the UK. The bill requires platform providers to remove content deemed harmful, such as child pornography and terrorist recruitment, and gives the Office of Communications (Ofcom) the power to enforce this law. The problem is that in order to do so, Ofcom must have visibility on the content, which implies mass government surveillance of any internet available to users within the UK. The bill also requires messaging app providers to implement some form of backdoor into the encrypted data, which is a technological impossibility as end-to-end encryption and backdoors are mutually exclusive.
The bill has been challenged by the Open Rights Group, as it lacks procedural safeguards for users whose content is restricted, and the potential for disproportionate surveillance of private chats. US firms are already affected by this law, and the danger is that its arguments may spread like a contagion to be used by other governments. Several messaging app companies, including WhatsApp and Signal, have stated that they will not provide a backdoor for Ofcom. Tutanota has taken a slightly different stance, stating that they will not ‘walk’ from the UK.
The only real option to ensure private communication despite the new law is superencryption – using one’s own non-backdoored encryption first, and then sending it through the system using the backdoored encryption. This is easily possible for communications formats as well as files.
In conclusion, the Online Safety Bill has been met with much criticism, as it does not protect user’s privacy, and is technically impossible to implement. While the government is attempting to protect children from online harm and keep personal communications private and secure, these two goals are impossible to reconcile and are likely to fail.
Key Points:
-The Online Safety Bill is a UK law that is likely to become law, and its reach extends to any internet platform providing services to people in the UK.
-The bill requires platform providers to remove content deemed harmful, and gives the Office of Communications (Ofcom) the power to enforce this law.
-The bill has been challenged by the Open Rights Group, as it lacks procedural safeguards for users whose content is restricted, and the potential for disproportionate surveillance of private chats.
-Several messaging app companies, including WhatsApp and Signal, have stated that they will not provide a backdoor for Ofcom.
-The only real option to ensure private communication despite the new law is superencryption.
-The government is attempting to protect children from online harm and keep personal communications private and secure, but these two goals are impossible to reconcile and are likely to fail.