09/06/2023

The UK is Poised to Force a Bad Law on the Internet

Some question if the Online Safety Bill will undermine encryption

The UK's ambitious controversial proposed internet regulation started with scribblings on the back of a packet for a brie and cranberry sandwich from Pret à Manger. Those notes, from discussions between academics Lorna Woods and William Perrin about how to make tech companies responsible for online harms, became an influential white paper in 2019. That in turn became the foundation of a draft law called the Online Safety Bill, an ambitious attempt to turn the UK into the "safest place in the world to be online," by regulating how platforms should handle harmful content, including child sexual abuse imagery, cyberbullying and misinformation.

Since then, Britain has endured three prime ministers (and one lettuce), four digital ministers, a pandemic and a rocky exit from the European Union. Successive iterations of the ruling Conservative government have expanded the bill that sprang from Woods and Perrin’s paper, mutating it from a genuine attempt to hold tech platforms to account for hosting harmful content, into a reflection of Britain’s post-Brexit political dysfunction.

The current government is widely expected to be voted from power next year, but the draft law returns to the House of Commons today, where members of parliament will have their final chance to debate its content. 

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.