Government passes law to access private messages on social platforms
Michelle Donelan, the technology secretary defends online safety bill passed by government to access private messages on messaging apps in UK.
Online Safety Bill
Michelle Donelan is the UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. She has recently defended a controversial section of the Online Safety Bill. This section would force messaging apps to access the content of private messages if requested by the regulator Ofcom. Donelan stated that this was a sensible approach in order to protect children from abuse.
Some tech firms, including WhatsApp and Signal, have threatened to leave the UK if forced to weaken their messaging security. The Bill is due to be passed in autumn.
Donelan claimed that the government was not anti-encryption and access would only be requested as a last resort. She said, “I, like you, want my privacy because I don’t want people reading my private messages. They’d be very bored but I don’t want them to do it. However, we do know that on some of these platforms, they are hotbeds sometimes for child abuse and sexual exploitation. Further, we have to be able access that information should that problem occur.” She also said the onus would be on tech companies to invest in technology to solve this issue.
How to Access Encrypted Messages
The current frontrunner for this is known as Client Side Scanning. Further, it involves installing software onto devices themselves which can scan content and send alerts if triggered. However, it has not proved popular. Apple halted a trial of it following a backlash, and it has been dubbed “the spy in your pocket”.
Ryan Polk, Director of Internet Policy at the Internet Society, a global charitable non-profit focused on Internet policy, technology, and development, is sceptical that the technology is ready. He said, “The government’s own Safety Tech Challenge Fund, which was supposed to find a magical technical solution to this problem, failed to do so.” Mr Polk said scientists from the UK’s National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online found severe problems with the proposed technologies.
He further said, ” that they undermine the end-to-end security and privacy necessary for protecting the security and privacy of UK citizens. If the UK government can’t see that the Online Safety Bill will in effect ban encryption, then they are willfully blinding themselves to the dangers ahead.”
Finally, Michelle Donelan has defended the Online Safety Bill’s section on messaging apps accessing private messages if requested by Ofcom.
However, several tech firms and cyber security communities have criticized this move. Besides, the debate continues, as the bill is due to be passed in autumn.
