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The British Parliament can start a debate on this Online Safety Bill Again soon this week. This bill is a deeply flawed censorship proposal Which UK residents will be jailed for what they say online. It would force online service providers to use government-approved software to detect user content believed to be related to terrorism or child abuse. In the process, it would undermine our right to private communications, and the technologies that protect that right, such as end-to-end encryption.
In a letter published today, the EFF has joined dozens of security researchers and human rights groups to send a clear message to incoming UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: the online safety bill must not weaken encryption. As the letter notes, in its current form, the The online safety bill “contains provisions that would eliminate end-to-end encryption in private messaging.” It continues:
Ignoring protections for end-to-end encryption will make UK businesses and individuals less secure online, including the very groups the Online Safety Bill seeks to protect. Furthermore, because the right to privacy and freedom of expression are intertwined, these proposals would undermine freedom of speech, a key characteristic of free societies that distinguishes the UK from tyrants who use oppression and coercion to achieve their aims.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of proposals put forward by governments that seek to scan user-to-user communications for criminal content: US Earn IT ActAnd EU proposal to scan private chats. All of these proposals suffer from the misconception that a backdoor or other means for reading encrypted messages can only be designed for benevolent use.
that Not the case, and never. Criminals, rogue employees, domestic abusers, and authoritarian governments are just some of the bad actors who will exploit backdoors like those proposed by the Online Safety Bill. Such proposals threaten a basic human right: our right to private communication.
We hope that Prime Minister Sunak will accept the consensus of technologists against the current Online Safety Bill and similar proposals.
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