The U.K. Parliament is pushing ahead with a sprawling internet regulation bill that will, among other things, undermine the privacy of people around the world. The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force backdoors into messaging services, which will destroy end-to-end encryption. No amendments have been accepted that would mitigate the bill’s most dangerous elements. If it passes, the Online Safety Bill will be a huge step backwards for global privacy, and democracy itself.
When this goes ahead, and it probably will, I hope that every single app implements it in a totally different, unfriendly, unautomated, way, or even better, make it unique per person, per app. Or, even multiple methods that are only available at certain times of certain days. It’ll be absolutely useless to the government if they have to wade through mud to get at the data.