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The UK government has admitted it will not use controversial powers in the Online Safety Act to scan messaging apps for harmful content until it is “technically feasible”, delaying measures that critics say threaten user privacy.
In a statement to the House of Lords on Wednesday afternoon, junior Arts and Heritage Secretary Lord Stephen Parkinson attempted a last-minute effort to end a standoff with tech companies, including WhatsApp, which have threatened to withdraw services from the UK. The UK claims this poses an intolerable threat to the privacy and security of millions of users.
Parkinson said technology regulator Ofcom would only require companies to scan their networks if it had developed technology capable of scanning them. Many security experts believe that such technology may still be years, if ever, developed.
“Notifications should only be issued where it is technically feasible and the technology has been approved to meet the minimum accuracy standards for detecting child sexual abuse and exploitation content,” he said.
The online safety bill, which has been in the works for several years and is now in its final stages in parliament, is one of the toughest attempts any government has made to hold big tech companies accountable for what they share on their networks.
Social media platforms have expressed displeasure with a provision in the bill that would allow UK regulators to force their permission to monitor their encrypted messages for harmful content, including child sexual exploitation material.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook parent company Meta, and Signal, another popular encrypted messaging app, have both threatened to withdraw from the UK market if they are ordered to weaken their encryption. Encryption is a widely used security technique that allows only the sender and receiver of a message to operate. View the content of the message.
Signal President Meredith Whittaker described the government’s move as a “victory, not a defeat” for tech companies.
“Of course, it’s not an outright victory,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We’d like to see that in the legal text. But it’s still huge, and in the sense that the implementation guidance will have the power to shape Ofcom’s implementation framework, it’s very big, very good.”
Officials have privately acknowledged to tech companies that there is no technology that can scan end-to-end encrypted messages without compromising users’ privacy, according to several people familiar with the administration’s thinking.
Critics have long argued that such technology does not exist, and that current scanning techniques have been found to make mistakes, misidentifying safe content as harmful and requiring flagged material to be checked by human monitors, exposing private content.
The government said on Wednesday that its position on the issue “has not changed”.
“As always, as a last resort, on a case-by-case basis, and only where strict privacy safeguards are met, Ofcom can direct companies to use or use best efforts to develop or procure technology to identify and remove unlawful child sexual abuse material — — we know it can be developed,” the government said.
“Ofcom is right that it should be able to demand that technology companies use its vast resources and expertise to provide the best possible protection for children in encrypted environments,” Parkinson added in the House of Lords, without revealing any details.
Child safety activists have for years urged the government to take tougher action on abusive content that tech companies share on apps.
Richard Collard, head of child safety online policy at the SPCC, said: “Our poll shows that the UK public overwhelmingly supports measures to tackle child abuse in an end-to-end encrypted environment. .Tech companies can demonstrate industry leadership by listening to the public and investing in technologies that protect the security and privacy rights of all users.”
Additional reporting by John Thornhill
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