By Susie Violet Ward · City A.M. · 23 August 2023
Written as a City A.M. column in August 2023, while the Online Safety Bill was going through Parliament, the piece questions whether its aim of protecting people online justified the risks to privacy. It focuses on concerns that the bill could undermine end-to-end encryption, a worry raised by Conservative MP David Davis and by Apple, and points to a police data leak in Northern Ireland earlier that month as a reason for caution about giving the authorities more control.
The column quotes Meredith Whittaker, President of the Signal Foundation, who said, “There is no way to create a backdoor that only the good guys can walk through,” and notes concern that services such as WhatsApp and Signal might leave the UK. It also suggests the bill could affect messaging features in tools such as the Lightning Network, and calls for changes informed by people who understand the technology.