How the Online Safety Act Risks Pushing Young People to Dangerous Spaces Online
Swiftly upon entering government, Labour classified the sharing of revenge porn as the most serious type of online offence under the landmark Online Safety Act (OSA), which it inherited from the Conservatives.
With the new Labour government setting out in the King's Speech its intention to strengthen the OSA, it's timely to consider other areas of this landmark legislation where changes or a rethink is needed to ensure the State can regulate the internet to keep people safe while preserving fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech and privacy.
The OSA provides the independent regulator Ofcom with powers to set codes of conduct for how British citizens use the internet, and to penalise companies that fail to comply with the regulator's demands.
Related reading: 'Why the Online Safety Act Won't Stop Type of Misinformation that Sparked Riots - the Government Must Create New Legislation'
In an effort to protect young users from unlawful and inappropriate content, the OSA requires certain websites and social media providers to age-verify users before granting users access. This well-intentioned rule, like various other provisions of the OSA, offers a false sense of security, and, it does so, at the expense of serious risks including both invasions of privacy and dangers to national security.
Sites hosted overseas are well accessible to people in the UK either directly or via virtual private networks (VPNs), but are outside the reach of the Government. And the imposition on certain websites and social media providers to perform age verification will not shield young users from accessing content reserved for an adult audience.
Instead, such a rule encourages children to circumvent controls and use a readily available VPN, or to migrate their searches to the dark web - a transition which, as The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children recently argued, is likely to exacerbate the problem rather than solve it.
Second, the OSA instils in parents and other guardians a false sense of security that children are shielded from adult content - while unregulated websites will continue to offer it undisturbed by UK law.
Related reading: UK Riots: How the Right-Wing Press Fought to Stop Laws to Combat Online Disinformation
Third, the OSA exposes sensitive identifying data to the internet, and to possible hacking and abuse by nefarious parties.
It is not a coincidence that, to date, no country has successfully implemented age verification to protect children from online adult content. Australia recently retracted its steps to mandate age checks - and ultimately decided, after confirming the seriousness of the related concerns about privacy, security risks and untested technology, not to force websites to implement it.
In a recent poll, commissioned by the campaign group Sack the Act!, most members of the public felt that the OSA should not be enforced in its current form; clearly, public opinion of such nature should prompt serious re-consideration from policymakers and Ofcom.
There are better ways to protect children than by imposing age verification requirements. One alternative is device-based systems in which filtering is performed on a child's device; such filtering can be easily configured by parents.
Related reading: Leading Labour MP Brands Twitter Owner Elon Musk a 'Dangerous Narcissist' as She Calls for Clampdown on Online Hate
Having the device calibrated according to the users' needs, and using information or settings stored on the users' device to confirm age, brings the control closer to the actual user, ensuring more accurate and effective protection, and reduces the collection of sensitive data and the significant inherent risks that come with collecting such information.
Major broadband providers and cellular providers can also easily block websites as necessary - preventing children from accessing unwarranted content.
In addressing online harms i
With the new Labour government setting out in the King's Speech its intention to strengthen the OSA, it's timely to consider other areas of this landmark legislation where changes or a rethink is needed to ensure the State can regulate the internet to keep people safe while preserving fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech and privacy.
The OSA provides the independent regulator Ofcom with powers to set codes of conduct for how British citizens use the internet, and to penalise companies that fail to comply with the regulator's demands.
Related reading: 'Why the Online Safety Act Won't Stop Type of Misinformation that Sparked Riots - the Government Must Create New Legislation'
In an effort to protect young users from unlawful and inappropriate content, the OSA requires certain websites and social media providers to age-verify users before granting users access. This well-intentioned rule, like various other provisions of the OSA, offers a false sense of security, and, it does so, at the expense of serious risks including both invasions of privacy and dangers to national security.
Sites hosted overseas are well accessible to people in the UK either directly or via virtual private networks (VPNs), but are outside the reach of the Government. And the imposition on certain websites and social media providers to perform age verification will not shield young users from accessing content reserved for an adult audience.
Instead, such a rule encourages children to circumvent controls and use a readily available VPN, or to migrate their searches to the dark web - a transition which, as The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children recently argued, is likely to exacerbate the problem rather than solve it.
Second, the OSA instils in parents and other guardians a false sense of security that children are shielded from adult content - while unregulated websites will continue to offer it undisturbed by UK law.
Related reading: UK Riots: How the Right-Wing Press Fought to Stop Laws to Combat Online Disinformation
Third, the OSA exposes sensitive identifying data to the internet, and to possible hacking and abuse by nefarious parties.
It is not a coincidence that, to date, no country has successfully implemented age verification to protect children from online adult content. Australia recently retracted its steps to mandate age checks - and ultimately decided, after confirming the seriousness of the related concerns about privacy, security risks and untested technology, not to force websites to implement it.
In a recent poll, commissioned by the campaign group Sack the Act!, most members of the public felt that the OSA should not be enforced in its current form; clearly, public opinion of such nature should prompt serious re-consideration from policymakers and Ofcom.
There are better ways to protect children than by imposing age verification requirements. One alternative is device-based systems in which filtering is performed on a child's device; such filtering can be easily configured by parents.
Related reading: Leading Labour MP Brands Twitter Owner Elon Musk a 'Dangerous Narcissist' as She Calls for Clampdown on Online Hate
Having the device calibrated according to the users' needs, and using information or settings stored on the users' device to confirm age, brings the control closer to the actual user, ensuring more accurate and effective protection, and reduces the collection of sensitive data and the significant inherent risks that come with collecting such information.
Major broadband providers and cellular providers can also easily block websites as necessary - preventing children from accessing unwarranted content.
In addressing online harms i
Activity