"First, there’s the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, introduced in 2016, which she describes as “deeply authoritarian”. Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that the Home Office had used a

"First, there’s the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, introduced in 2016, which she describes as “deeply authoritarian”. Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that the Home Office had used a “technical capability notice” under the Act to demand Apple provide access to a user’s encrypted messages and data. The leaked story caused a furore in Washington. Apple has appealed, and the Home Office looks set to back down. But for some, the episode has cast a shadow over the UK.

“It’s a very, very disturbing power,” says Whittaker. If such a “back door” was opened, she says, it would create a technological weakness that could enable other governments and powers to infiltrate all users’ data. “There’s no one back door in an interconnected network,” she network,” she says, meaning that if you create one, more can be created. “If you implement that in the UK … it poisons the whole network. So that’s Ukraine. That’s Belarus. That is anywhere else.”

She says that one of the “most pernicious and alarming” problems is that if a company accepts a “technical capability notice”, it is prohibited from informing users.
(...)
Then there’s the Online Safety Act, under which tech platforms such as Facebook and X are required to use age-verification tools and block posts in order to protect under-18 users from “harmful” content, such as pornography and self-harm videos. Whittaker describes this “technically incoherent” law as “a mess”, citing the removal of LGBTQ+ posts on some platforms and a surge in the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), with which people can hide their identity, location and age.

Whittaker thinks these two pieces of legislation are “deeply incoherent” with the UK’s stated desire to become an “AI champion”. “You get real boosterism on that side, which I think is in many cases ill-conceived.”"

https://www.thetimes.com/article/fbca3eda-fd9f-4e46-a2f7-36d0b05acccb

#UK #Surveillance #Censorship #OSA #OnlineSafetyAct #Privacy #NannyState