Online Safety Bill: Whatapp warns law would allow mass surveillance of public

Meredith Whittaker, president of not-for-profit secure messaging app Signal, previously told the Standard that if the bill doesn’t amend its language: “It will not only create a significant vulnerability that will be exploited by hackers, hostile nation states, and those wishing to do harm, but effectively salt the earth for any tech development in London and the UK at large.”

“Passing the bill as-is sends the clear message that the UK Government would rather make law based on magical thinking, than honour longstanding expert consensus when it comes to issues of complex technology.”

Earlier this week the House of Lords voted to incorporate an amendment to the Online Safety Bill that would impose a duty on tech companies to protect children from harmful content, citing how they could be directed towards content by the influencer Andrew Tate.

In support of the proposals, Lady Kidron argued that companies should be held accountable for algorithms that sent users to dangerous internet content. The amendment was passed by a margin of 72.

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Ofcom recently revealed that the cost of developing and implementing the government’s new regulatory changes for internet safety might be close to £170 million.

WhatsApp is among the apps criticising the Government’s Online Safety Bill, which it says could potentially undermine end-to-end encryption.

Encrypted messaging services WhatsApp, Session, Signal, Element, Threema, Viber and Wire have signed a letter calling on the Government to “urgently rethink” the proposed bill.

End-to-end encryption is a security method that keeps chats and messages secure. It is a system of communication where only the users communicating can read the messages.

The co-founder and chief executive of Element, Matt Hodgson, said: “The UK wants its own special access into end-to-end encrypted systems. Bad actors don’t play by the rules. Rogue nation states, terrorists and criminals will target that access with every resource they have.

“[The Online Safety Bill] is outright dangerous. It’s the cyber equivalent of Britain decommissioning its nuclear deterrent.”

The BBC reported a Government official as saying: “We support strong encryption, but this cannot come at the cost of public safety.

“Tech companies have a moral duty to ensure they are not blinding themselves and law enforcement to the unprecedented levels of child sexual abuse on their platforms.

“The Online Safety Bill in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption.”

So what is the Online Safety Bill?

What is the Online Safety Bill?

The Online Safety Bill is a new set of laws to protect children and adults online. It is intended to make social media companies more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms.

If the bill becomes law, it would make social media companies remove illegal content deemed as harmful to children and adults. This includes pornography and content promoting self-harm.

The Online Safety Bill has been working its way through Parliament since being published in draft form in May 2021. The Government says it would put the media regulator Ofcom in charge of checking whether platforms were protecting their users. Firms that break rules for harmful content would face large fines.

The Government has posted a guide to it on its website here.

Which measures were scrapped in the Online Safety Bill?

In November, controversial measures that would have forced big technology platforms to take down “legal but harmful” material were scrapped from the bill. Critics of the section in the bill claimed it posed a risk to free speech and gave big tech companies too much power.

Ministers axed the provision on regulating “legal but harmful” material accessed by adults – offensive content that does not constitute a criminal offence. They are instead requiring platforms to enforce their terms and conditions for users.

If those terms explicitly prohibit content that falls below the threshold of criminality – such as some forms of abuse – Ofcom will then have the power to ensure they police them adequately.

Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan denied weakening laws protecting social media users. She said adults would have more control over what they saw online.

She told the BBC the bill was not being watered down, and that tech companies had the expertise to protect people online.

“These are massive, massive corporations that have the money, the knowhow and the tech to be able to adhere to this,” she said in December.

She warned that those who did not comply would face significant fines and “huge reputational damage”.

But some criticised the changes, including Labour and the Samaritans, who called it a hugely backwards step.

What does ‘legal but harmful’ mean?

The bill previously included a section that required “the largest, highest-risk platforms” to tackle some “legal but harmful” material accessed by adults. This referred to offensive content that does not constitute a criminal offence.

It meant that the likes of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube would have been tasked with preventing people being exposed to content about topics such as self-harm and eating disorders, as well as misogynistic posts.

Why is the Online Safety Bill controversial?

The bill has been controversial since its introduction to Parliament in May 2021. It has drawn criticism from two main camps: online safety campaigners and free speech advocates.

Despite the planned changes referring to material accessed by adults, the former argue the legislation does not go far enough to protect people from the swathes of harmful content online.

The boss of charity the Samaritans, Julie Bentley, said “the damaging impact that this type of content has doesn’t end on your 18th birthday”.

“Increasing the controls that people have is no replacement for holding sites to account through the law and this feels very much like the Government snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

But free speech campaigners have argued the bill opened the door for technology companies to censor legal speech.

The “legal but harmful” provision was especially seen as restrictive and critics feared too much content would be removed. They have argued that social media sites would have been pressured into taking down material that people had a right to see.

It was “legislating for hurt feelings”, former Conservative leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch said.

In July, nine senior Conservatives, including former ministers Lord Frost, David Davis and Steve Baker, who has since returned to Government, wrote a letter to then Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries. They said the provision could be used to clamp down on free speech by a future Labour government.

Following the outcry, Ms Donelan has ditched the “legal but harmful” restrictions. These would have imposed potential multi-million-pound fines on sites if they failed to prevent adult and children from seeing material that fell under this category, such as content on suicides and self-harm.

Defending the decision, she said the measure would have harmed free speech and created a “quasi-legal category”.

“It had (a) very, very concerning impact, potentially, on free speech,” Ms Donelan told Sky News. “There were unintended consequences associated with it. It was really the anchor that was preventing this bill from getting off the ground.

“It was a creation of a quasi-legal category between illegal and legal. That’s not what a Government should be doing. It’s confusing. It would create a different kind of set of rules online to offline in the legal sphere.”

The bill is intended to become law in the UK before next summer.