UK's "Online Safety Bill" should be renamed the "Online Exposure Bill
UK's "Online Safety Bill" should be renamed the "Online Exposure Bill
WhatsApp and Signal have threatened to shut down services in Britain if the Online Safety Bill includes restrictions that undermine encryption. The government is pushing it through anyway.
I believe the "Online Safety Bill" should be renamed the "Online Exposure Bill," and here's why:
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Age verification likely involves estimating age based on biometric data – essentially, using an algorithm to scan a photo or video of the user." making our identity transparent in the digital world.
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"Client-side scanning, where a phone or other device would scan the content of a message before it’s encrypted and flag or block violating material." This effectively renders E2EE (End-to-End Encryption) useless!
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What concerns me most is that biometric data is permanent and cannot be changed. If we share it with the digital world, it could lead to lifelong privacy risks. And I believe that the risks and threats to privacy brought by the UK's Online Safety Bill far outweigh the protection it can provide us with.
I don't know how the government plans to enforce the Bill, but as far as I know, some decentralized encrypted messaging apps are unstoppable, because every user who using the app jointly creates the social network that avoids a single point of failure.