"The “CSAM requirement” is that any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device."
"Regulations under subsection (1) must enable the Secretary of State, by further regulations, to expand the definition of ‘relevant devices’ to include other categories of device which may be used to record, transmit or view CSAM"
Apple, what did you start?
[1] https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/746...
It's happening. Computer freedom, everything the word "hacker" ever stood for, will be officially destroyed if this passes. We're about to be robbed of control over our computers by force of law. It's just the UK now but eventually it will be every country.
This is a very dark day. I've been prophesizing its arrival for a while now. I was secretly hoping I was wrong about everything, that we'd turn this around, that we'd enshrine a right to control our computers into law. The opposite is happening instead. It's so sad...
I'd even go as far to say that if things become this authoritarian, certain "direct" acts would be justified in preventing or fighting it.
In short, the Pandora's Box of automated surveillance and security risk on any smartphone or tablet is opened, while a gigantic loophole for serious offenders is left open.
Yea, I know that's never going to happen. Still, I can dream
It's happening in the US now under the guise of AI data centers for consumers but I suspect it will be instead used to surveillance everyone who doesn't agree with the fascist government. This is Larry Ellison's public vision but Musk and Thiel also play a role.
When I say "the future is signed, verified code from bootloader to application level" I mean it will likely be backed up by force of law. No one complains about the mandatory safety features various governments require cars to come equipped with. The voices of a handful of nerds will go unheard when the law starts insisting computers come equipped with safety features also.
I mean this is the country of favelas where even the police don't dare to enter.
The modern societies run via those devices and the enforcement will move to the mostly free Internet that was "a long time ago, when it didn't matter as much".
Apple tried to do it in a way where nobody would see your personal data until they had multiple confirmed matches against known CSAM - and even then a human would check the results before involving any law enforcement.
But the internet had one of their Misunderstanding Olympics and now we're here again - with an even shittier solution, being formed into actual law.
They're probably thrilled with themselves because everything will have to be closed, locked down platforms and devices.
IMO the solution to child safety is education with strong user controls. Hell, just delete the social media apps from existence if the other option is dystopian control of our communications.
- require proof of age (ID) to install apps from unofficial sources on your phone or PC. Probably best to block this at both the OS and also popular VPN downloading sites like github.com and debian.org.
- require proof of age (ID) to unblock DNS provider IP addresses like 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 at your ISP.
- make sure children aren't using any other "privacy" tools that might be a slippery slope to installing a VPN.
This makes it so much easier for the parents too! The internet will be so safe that they won't even need to talk to their children about internet safety.
So they are much more than halfway there already...
> The Security Service Act 1989 sets out our functions and gives some examples of the nature and range of threats we work to disrupt.
> In summary, our functions are:
> to protect national security against threats from espionage, terrorism and > sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers, and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means
Imagine you and I pay likely billions a year and these jokers just let asset managers like Larry Fink influence policies affecting fundamental rights of British people like it's nothing.
The country is corrupt beyond belief and soon we will wake up in corporate prison as slaves.
See:
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/tokenization-blackrocks-...
https://www.cityam.com/reeves-and-starmer-meet-blackrocks-la...
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-digital-id-scheme-to-...
You claim to pay tax in the UK. You dislike many many aspects of the UK fundamentally so I'm curious, why stay?
But yes in the last ~20 years are so it's somehow become a top EU goal as well.
Far more people strongly support it than strongly oppose
The idea it's being done in spite of the public doesn't seem to track with reality. You also don't have to look very hard on social media to find lots of British people supporting strong government policing of the internet.
house of lords
it's really not a problem, they're essentially a reviewing chamber
it works quite well
The true issue lies in the fact that the Westminster style of government is de facto an elective tyranny, with no real checks and balances other than the misused ECHR
It is though. This is one of the few surveillance issues actually driven by grassroots organisations like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout) in particular when it comes to adult content who have been at this globally for well over a decade.
There's no shadowy cabal trying to age-restrict porn or social media, this is more like a modern day Carrie Nation. Puritanism always comes from the bottom up
This is not to say that we should not actively work to prevent criminal acts, but that trying to establish a world in which such acts are impossible will cripple society in ways which will leave us vulnerable to much larger and more systemic abuses. Benjamin Franklin’s statement rings as true as ever, if in a rather updated context: “ They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link their accounts to digital IDs for this verification.
Naturally the only remaining loophole is if a UK citizen manages to avoid being flagged as British ever by using a VPN, so I expect they will focus on that going forwards. Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences, there's no slippery-slope argument here because the UK is already at the bottom of the slope as an ultra-authoratitarian anti-speech nation.
Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? The only reason anyone ever asks to see ID is so they can use it verify attributes of your identity, such as name and age. Otherwise what’s the point of an Identity Document, if it’s not to document something?
Digital ID has always been sold as something approximating your passport/Driver License (there is no official government ID in the UK), but digital, on your phone, and actually a government identity document. Rather than a government document that has a specific purpose (such as crossing the border or driving a car), which people pretend is government ID. Something that can cause a serious problem for people because passports and driver’s licenses aren’t free to obtain, replace or keep valid. Plus the government departments that issue them refuse to take any responsibility or liability for the accuracy or validity of the documents for any use case outside their very specific role in narrow government functions, like crossing the border, or figuring out if you’re allowed to drive a car.
The UK already has citizen SSO that stretches across all digital government services, and has had that for a decade plus now. Although it’s not really attached your identity, it’s just a unified auth system so government departments don’t end up creating their own broken auth systems instead.
Ideally this could be done without deanonymizing accounts to service providers unless the user wants to for a 'verified' account linked to their identity publically but I don't think any digital ID system has been built that way. Imagine it acting like OAuth but instead of passing back an identity token it's just verification of age, platforms would store that which would show they had performed the age verification and could be used for other age gates if there are any.
It's Government services SSO.
And no, Digital ID wasn't sold as something like this, it has been sold as a way to prevent (?) "illegals" from working, by introducing system entirely similar to the current eVisa.
Unless you slept through all these televised discussions where Keir Starmer with a stern face explained how a wholly-digital system replacing wholly-digital system will stop these pesky immigrants from getting work (it's almost like in the current systems employers didn't have to do these checks already).
There's been SO, SO MANY lies, like that this system wi be similar to the Polish/Estonian, only these two are primarily physical documents, additionally bearing certificates that can be used to authenticate against the participating systems.
Sure, some countries ALSO have a digital form of the ID, but never advertised as a hate-whip against the others.
The primary problem with the only-electronic Certificate you call ID, is that it's supposed to be always online (never cached, like, say...... Um.....actual Digital ids or cards in the normal phones), so it can be cancelled at any point, also due to the errors of the government employees or systems.
The problem is that MANY people had a very serious problems with eVisa already, leading to being bounced off the Border Patrol or failing to prove right to rent.
Even if the idea of the ID was in general good (and I use one I really love, works wonderfully well), this government lied too many times and is forcing us to eat the frog that we've seen many times prior, is half baked and will burst in someone's face.
This idea is tainted because we're lied to and it's half-baked, and hostile in principle, not helpful.
I think you’ve been spending too much time on Twitter
https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes...
> Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day. This marks an almost 58 per cent rise in arrests since before the pandemic. In 2019, forces logged 7,734 detentions.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
Online Communication Offence Arrests Volume 847: debated on Thursday 17 July 2025
They think that European countries (or commonly just "Europe") are about to arrest all citizens for criticizing politicians. "Europe" must be saved from their leftist fascist regimes. For now using propaganda. Soon militarily.
Make of that what you will but to me the net outflow is the canary in the coalmine.
The UK is headed for a dark future.
No it fucking doesn’t.
Vast? No, they really don't.
It's generally fine-tuning rather than another massive hurdle after getting it through the Commons that the Lords might not pass it at all, though.
You might be thinking of 'royal assent' which is pretty much just a rubber stamp, yes, post-Lords.
Gotta hand it to them - "protecting the children" is a pretty good pretext.
The one from yesterday was discussing how australia is banning social media for anyone under 16. Most comments were supportive because they hate social media.
A few comments were discussing how it is just a way to propagate more KYC.
After the number of data breaches we've seen, they want to do this, and in the least privacy-preserving way possible.
Why not set up a government api where a site can get a yes/no answer about age using tokens, so the site itself gets no information but if the age is ok? Nope, we'll just pick a few sites and force everyone to give them their data, what could go wrong?
And if you actually look at the suicide statistics, there's no epidemic of suicides going on...
https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/populat...
It's just lazy parents who can't be bothered parenting looking for a quick fix. I want to hand my phone to little tommy and turn my brain off.
What's even more galling is that the quick fix with so many obvious negatives won't even fix anything. As a kid I had unlimited time to get around any blocks. It's so dumb.
4chan is perfectly fine, but reddit must be stopped! Just to be clear I don't think either should be blocked.
Make the entire internet 18+ only and put the parents who let kids on the net in jail, I don't care.
Especially because it's gotten so bad. At first it was just 'making things popular in your network more visible'. But now it's to where when I use something like Facebook there is more 'algorithm spam' than anything actually happening with my friends. It's become something where the primary purpose is 'driving views' rather than communicating. [1]
A VPN is a bit different; it's a tool, and I will note one that depending on the specific definition has legitimate (or at least morally/ethically legitimate) uses.
[0] - e.x. unless it has been reversed in the last decade or two, in the US you still can't cut from a kid's cartoon right into a commercial for a toy/game related to said cartoon. I mean FFS that was a rule that got put in before 'attention hacking' was even a term.
[1] - TBH I'd love if we could get back to Myspace or maybe even early Facebook type social media. There's a lot of excitement lost when an algorithm feeds you shit versus a friend sharing it, and it was a lot less noise...
At that point all the technical components exist to make this an ultra easy UI for parents. Require ISP WiFi routers at least to support VLANs and PPSKs, which ultra cheap gear can do nowadays no problem, and have an easy to GUI to "generate child password, restrict to [age bracket]", heck to even just put in a birthday and by default have it auto-increment access if a parent wants. Add some easy options for time-of-day restrictions etc, done. Now parents are in charge and no adult needs anything ever.
Now I highly doubt politicians are all being honest about full motivations here, clearly there are plenty of forces trying to use this issue as a wedge to go after rights in general. But at the same time parental concern is real, and non-technical people find it overwhelming. It'd be good if industries and community could proactively offer a working solution, that'd reduce the political salience a great deal. It's unfortunate the entire narrative has been allowed to go 100% backwards in approach.
Once the baseline is established, the playbook becomes simple: Shift that age bracket up to the very moment when someone can vote. Make sure that every new voter spends all their formative years unable to access even basic resources on the struggles that marginalized groups go through, and the history of their existence; set the bars for the "whitelist" so high that one must toe the party line in every bit of messaging, and thus is effectively a list of propagandists whose businesses can be fined astronomically if they deviate. Take away the parent's choice, and make it mandatory to use routers that block the non-whitelisted TLDs for any device that doesn't cryptographically authenticate as being operated by an adult. Find ways to impose this on groups other than children (for instance, by making it illegal for criminals to access the non-whitelisted web, then greatly expanding that definition). All in the name of peace and tranquility.
If you want V for Vendetta, this is how you get V for Vendetta.
... only to the degree it hasn't been manufactured by tabloid media and Russian propaganda warfare, that is.
With every little news about local shootings, robberies, rapes, beatings, thefts, whatever not just making national, but in the worst case international headlines, one might think that Western countries are unsafe hellholes of the likes of actually legitimately failed states - despite criminality rates often being on record lows. Of course parents are going to be afraid for their children, and it's made worse by many Western countries financially only allowing for one, maximum two children.
On top of that, a lot of the panic is simply moral outrage. Porn and "trans grooming" it seems to be these days, I 'member growing up with the "Killerspiele" bullshit after some nutjob shot up a school in the early '00s. My parents grew up with the manufactured fear of reading too much as it was supposed to make you myopic. Again, all manufactured fear by organized groups aiming to rip our rights to pieces.
Parents should relax and rather teach their children about what can expect them on the Internet, how people might want to take advantage of them, and most importantly, that their children can always come to them when they feel something is going bad, without repercussions. When children think that they cannot show something to their parents, that is where the actual do-bad people have an in.
"everyone should just adopt my values and then all these political problems would just disappear. voila!"
Our governments have turned into the very thing they claimed to be opposing for decades. It's disgraceful.
Their next-door neighbour is threatening war and their longtime ally has turned into an unreliable kook. It’s not all that surprising that countries are looking to bolster their defences.
It's not bolstering defenses, it's bolstering expansion of the surveillance state panopticon because "think of the children!"
God I'm sick of the constant attacks against online freedom.
God forbid anyone should ever have a private conversation.
The amendment from the same three people about requiring all phones to "have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device" strikes me as in the fringe whackjob range.
LORD NASH [Tory, contactholmember@parliament.uk] BARONESS CASS [Crossbench / 'independent', rivisn@parliament.uk ("staff")] BARONESS BENJAMIN [Liberal Democrat - which particularly disappoints me – benjaminf@parliament.uk]
All three can be contacted by sending an email to contactholmember@parliament.uk using the proper form of address as detailed in https://members.parliament.uk/member/4270/contact
If you're reading this website and are either living in the UK or are a British citizen I strongly urge you to write a personalised and above all polite email stating with evidence why they are misguided. The "think of the children" brigade is strong – you may well be able to persuade these individuals why it is a bad idea.
don't you remember 2010?
So how long will we have to wait before it dawns on them that VPNs are also used to circumvent IP address blocks in the UK, and other countries of course.
I think the whole idea is that we don't have to wait, and that "it dawned on them" before they even wrote the draft law.
I will say the EUs love affair with it is somewhat new (last 10-15 years or so).
Economy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp7v7r28yo
Youth unemployment: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/12/11/britains-you...
Health care: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/11/nhs-bracing-...
Can't seem to link the section but down this page are some options that don't require that: https://mullvad.net/en/pricing
or look at their personal data
or use behavior analytics to target minority groups as "risks" sending law enforcement to harass or kill them.
or store all their personal data on a 3rd party companies insecure servers
You have to start surveillance young, get them used to it early so they don't realize how bad it is!
My initial thought would it would be just making it super easy for their guardians to distribute and control device content. But let the control end at that echelon of power; Not even the local councils or schools should be given the power to regulate social media for kids to this extent IMO, let alone the govt
For some history and related standards, see Wikipedia:
PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...
POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R...
ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
The more "digi-ID so we are sure you are old enough, bitte" keeps been pushed, the clearer it's about tracking and not about children. No matter how much they love to frame it the other way around. Unless they want to admit they are total inepts.
Admittedly on paper that means the Gov system would know which sites you were approved for, not logging that would require legislation to not store these logs.
The encouraging part is that we are in control and it's easier to navigate with a system than to resist it, so the question becomes.
- How do we modify the incentives that are already in place to not result in the exploitation of children?
Because people generally make decisions for their best interest, we're in a dangerous situation where the incentives are for child exploitation.
An example would be: I need to feed my family I need to work to live I need to appease my boss to continue to work The boss has goals to meet We need to perform these actions to meet the goals There isn't time or space to consider the full consequences of this action When the impact to children is not considered by a change to a system, they inevitably reap the consequences of living in a system that never considered their welfare.
The children that grew up feeling out of control, and in a system not designed for them then seek to control the very system that formed them - not knowing that they're replicating the same harm that got them there.
This is a design cycle as I see it, if we don't look at it and understand it - then we will continue feeling powerless - while holding the reigns of our future in our hands.
I believe so much in the power of humanity - so I share this not with the idea that I have the answers, but that I am part of the collective that does.
But it's not just bigotry, unfortunately. They are trying to ban free usage of computers for the general public. They want to establish authoritarianism, at least some form of it.
They both want to go back to the days of billionare-controlled media setting and driving the narrative, because they know how to influence that (or in Labor's case, think they know but they always fail to, despite sucking up to the media). So they dispose the Internet and social media.
I really don't get their reasoning here.
I certainly agree. But its worth noting that only 92 of the 825 seats in the Lords are reserved for hereditary peers - the remainder are nominated by the (elected) leaders of the main political parties, or are appointed for non-political achievements (science, society, business, arts, etc.) There are also 26 Church of England bishops. Legislation to remove the hereditary peers is currently going through parliament.
There's plenty wrong with the HoL, but I think there's at least an argument to be made that the UK benefits from a parliamentary revising chamber that is less party-political than the Commons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...
However, I have many criticisms of the continuing undemocratic nature U.S. Senate (I think it should be dissolved entirely), but that reform was a good step.
It's true that the upper house will be less party political, but that is because everyone inside is very comfy with each other and aligned on policy that favors the wealthy.
Making it life appointments only makes things much worse. It is not possible to be depoliticized in a polarized environment; look at what happened to the US supreme Court, or the Polish one.
The idea of a House of Lords does strike me as a bit odd, but it's not really the big deal it used to be.
(That is, none at all)
The UK went culturally off the deep end a long time ago.
This is not an enforceable law. It seems predicated on the notion that VPNs can only exist as a commercial product, but all you need is two computers connected to the internet.
What the heck media are these folks consuming to have such a warped view of this country?
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/london-murder-rate-dr...
Then they say it's about knife crime. Where the UK also does better than the US.
https://www.euronews.com/2018/05/05/trump-s-knife-crime-clai...
("(Redirected from Freedom of speech in the United Kingdom)" kind of funny innit)
"They're too stupid to have a say"
Same shit used against women in some countries.
I think the research consensus is that the internet is a dangerous place for kids. And pragmatic life experience shows that as a parent, you can't control well what your kids have access to. While I think many of these laws are poorly implemented and unnecessarily endanger the free Internet, I think they are coming from a good place.
I think arguing that there should be no restrictions whatsoever is completely ignoring the negative societal impact of modern technology and is actually unpragmatic and counterproductive, because that impact is very real and people want to control it. They won't care about arguments about freedom that seem far fetched to them.
To me a much more fruitful discussion would be on how to control these things and how to ensure it doesn't become a creeping censorship mechanism. Simply saying "no" will mean people who care about free internet will be left on the side.
Because actually there is a lot one could do to reconcile these two standpoints:
- ensure privacy-preserving mechanisms are used for age verification
- ensure laws proactively proscribe freedom of internet outside of selected (age restricted) areas
- provide transparency laws that enable citizens to see all data collected on them, GDPR-style.
- pathways for citizens to appeal or request compensation for violations of privacy
- and crucially, prevent other terrible things in this area, like the demand I saw on a related thread that all mobile devices have an unremovable black-box software that censors all internet access.
Would I mind a provably privacy-preserving age check? Not really. And it's actually achievable, as opposed to simply attempting to veto this whole wave. Hackers like us no longer own the web, it has become a common good.
As a postscriptum, there's a ton of cynicism about "think of the children" and CSAM. I can well believe it's BS when politicians say it. Equally I don't take it as a given. I feel uncomfortable when my freedom to browse innocuous stuff shelters predators and gives 12 year olds access to SM porn. You're free to disagree, but it seems the world is moving on. You can shout at the clouds or try to find a compromise.
We all know where this is going, they're going to ban the one mathematical tool we have that gives us control over machines, encryption.
When that's said, there are forces in the EU as well which try stunts like this, kind of, but in the EU there are at least lots of countries and lots of opposing voices. In the UK the situation is different.
Basically, there have been a string of anonymous secure phones designed and marketed directly to high-ups in organised crime. Encrochat, Sky ECC, Anom, Phantom Secure, probably more. Their plausible deniability is thin - an undercover government agent goes to the creators and basically says "I'd like to buy 30 of these for my drug-dealing empire" and the creator says "Sure, that'll be $2000 each." Later the agent calls them up and goes "Hey this guy cooking meth was busted by the cops, can you erase his phone?" and the creator goes "Sure." and erases the phone. That's not merely selling secure phones - that's joining organised crime (as the guy who makes the phones).
Someone in the French government basically said that if Graphene is another Phantom Secure, they should suffer the same consequences as Phantom Secure. That's what the comment was. It doesn't seem like Graphene is another Phantom Secure, but they're sure acting suspicious by running away from France because of this comment.
So for a long time, I traced most roads in the US back to London... (for example Star Chamber origins)...
After a while though, as I dug into the real history of banking, I realized when William of Orange was installed it was shortly after that the Bank of England was established to take them over the same way they later influenced us (Jekyll Island) to establish the Fed, the main trojan horse for a country being monetary countrol.
So I now understand just like the masons, or intel dudes, etc, many of them are just so compartmentalized they don't know what they are a part of. I now view the UK the same way.
So lets keep following the strings up the chain...
"You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect." - Miyamoto Musashi
