By now, we’ve all heard the familiar refrain: “It’s for your safety.” It’s the soothing mantra of every government official who’s ever wanted a peek behind your digital curtains.
This week, with a move that would make East Germany blush, the UK government officially confirmed its intention to hand Ofcom (yes, that Ofcom, the regulator that once investigated whether Love Island was too spicy) the keys to your private messages.
The country, already experiencing rapidly declining civil liberties, is now planning to scan encrypted chats for “bad stuff.”
Now, for those unfamiliar, Ofcom is the UK’s communications regulator that has recently been given censorship pressure powers for online speech.
It’s become the government’s Swiss Army knife for everything from internet censorship to now, apparently, full-blown surveillance.
Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom has been handed something called Section 121, which sounds like a tax loophole but is actually a legal crowbar for prying open encrypted messages.
It allows the regulator to compel any online service that lets people talk to each other, Facebook Messenger, Signal, iMessage, etc to install “accredited technology” to scan for terrorism or child abuse material.
More: Starmer Adds To UK Civil Liberties Decline With Reckless iCloud Backdoor Demand
The way this works is by scanning all your messages. Not just the suspicious ones. Not just the flagged ones. Every single message. On your device. Before they’re encrypted.
This is “client-side scanning,” which is a clever euphemism for “we’re turning your phone into a government informant.”
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